


The Price of Memory

by eliddell



Category: Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Action, Amnesia, Angst, Broken character is broken, Difficult Decisions, Drama, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Post-Evolution-R
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-22 14:44:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4839344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't ever drink something a friend buys for you as a prank.  Especially if he doesn't know that you're a dragon.</p><p>Val only intended to hang out for a while with his friends that evening, then go back to his hotel room to sleep it off.  Instead he fell into bed with a red-haired stranger who seemed to know him, even though Val had never seen him in his life before.</p><p>The encounter leaves the young dragon in a complicated position, which rapidly gets worse as dragons and Dark Lords start expressing an interest in his growing power.</p><p>And now Val must choose between service to powers he doesn't trust, a life on the run . . . and a past he doesn't remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Augh, where to begin.
> 
> This is, in my opinion, a weaker story than _By a Different Name_ , and it takes a bit of a left turn at the very end. I knew I didn't want to post it first, and was of two minds as to whether to post it at all. It feels to me like half of it is angst, although I'm not sure I'm being fair to it.
> 
> There is a scene in the very last chapter, a flashback, that I couldn't quite justify tagging as BDSM. It isn't sexual, it isn't really torture, it's just . . . odd, and it's most of what's bothering me about this 'fic. At the same time, I couldn't bring myself to cut it. Val is a lot more broken in this story than I normally write him, although he hides it.
> 
> I do not own _The Slayers_ —it belongs to Kanzaka-san and various others.

"Geez, Val, you're such a stuffed shirt sometimes!" Milos was grinning from ear to ear, which I found was usually bad news. "We're just talking about having a few drinks, not spending the night in a whorehouse!" 

Katina whacked him over the head with the rolled-up map she was holding. "We'd better not be! If you try that, I _will_ tell Mom on you!" 

Milos rubbed his head. "Well, you know, a man has _needs_ . . . well, maybe not Val, since he has you—" 

His sister flushed bright red. "We're not—oh, you take that back, you little—" She stuffed the map back in her bag and grabbed him in a headlock, while Milos laughed. He was three years younger than she was, but already bigger, and he could have stopped her easily if he'd wanted to. 

"Quit it, you two," I said, rolling my eyes. I was already starting to regret bringing them along on this delivery, but none of us got the chance to come to the city very often, and Filia-mama had insisted that Tina and I have a chaperone, hence Milos. Never mind that Milos was normally the worst of us for getting into trouble. "Fine, we'll find a bar and have a couple of drinks. _Just_ a couple. Then we're going back to the inn. And tomorrow morning, we're going home." We'd already delivered Filia-mama's vases to the inn on the other side of town that had ordered them, and paid off the carter, so there was no reason not to. 

I offered Tina my arm, and she laid her hand on it, all very proper. She _was_ very proper when it came to the whole courtship thing, never spending more than a few minutes alone with me, never wearing dresses that showed anything between her collarbones and her knees, even at festival time . . . although they weren't always very thick. Still, I liked her. She was quick-witted, with an easy sense of humour. And I liked her trim body, the breasts that filled my hands to overflowing, the soft curves of her waist and hip, her long strawberry blonde hair and the taste of her mouth when we kissed. We were a long, long way from setting a wedding date, but neither of us doubted that it would happen eventually. 

Milos was gangly after his recent growth spurt (although he claimed that seventeen was far, far too late for such a thing), with sandy hair and a spray of freckles across his nose. He looked a lot like his father, the miller back in our home village of Stor's Eve, but taller and skinnier. 

They knew I wasn't really human—it was common knowledge in Stor's Eve that there was something fishy about Filia-mama and I—but they didn't know exactly what I was. I'd have to tell Tina eventually, I knew, but it was early days yet. 

Milos was the one who found the tavern. That, too, should have told me it was a mistake, but the place looked respectable enough. The hanging signboard identified it as _The Wine and Vine_ , complete with a surprisingly realistic drawing of grapevines wound around a full glass. 

Inside, it was well-lit—brighter than it had been outside, with sunset reaching its end and only half the streetlamps lit. There was a long bar of polished wood along one wall, and a bunch of tables scattered through the rest of the room. 

Milos went right up to the bar and sat down—I guess he wanted to look grown-up. I exchanged an eye-rolling glance with Tina and followed him. 

"—my sis and her fiance," he was saying as we sat down beside him. I gritted my teeth and didn't say anything, because I knew that if I spoke up, he'd turn out to have been talking about his _other_ sister, Shayna, who was in fact engaged to an apprentice tailor. 

"Ah! Well, if you want a private little celebration, you've come to the right place, my young friends!" the man said. "Hold on a moment, and I'll get one ready for you—" 

" _Mi_ , you idiot, what did you do this time?" Tina said while I was still trying to parse that not-conversation. 

"It's harmless," Milos said. "Really!" He pointed to a chalkboard above the bar. The third line read, "Private Little Celebration (4-2) 5cpr". 

"It's a _drink_?" I said. 

"Yeah, one of those things with two straws. I figured it couldn't hurt anything. Everyone knows you two are a couple." 

Tina went bright pink. Judging from how hot my face had gotten, I was probably a similar colour. 

"It isn't official," I ground out. 

"And everyone knows _that's_ because Mom doesn't want to lose the baby of the family." 

"We'll both be twenty-one next year," I said. _Well, sort of, if you count it from the point where I hatched . . ._ "After that, she won't have any say." 

"You haven't actually asked me yet, you know," Tina said, still pink. 

"When the time comes," I said, putting my hand over hers. "I promise." 

"Here you go, my lord and lady! One Private Little Celebration!" 

I eyed the thing the bartender had just placed in front of us. "I can see why they call it that." The glass would have made a decent trophy cup, and inside were layers of liqueur and what I hoped was fruit juice and . . . _Is that whipped cream on top? Oh, boy._ The promised two straws stuck up vertically on either side of a disturbingly phallic imported banana with a cherry and another dollop of whipped cream at the tip. It looked more like the very illegitimate offspring of a float and a banana split than anything you'd expect to order at a bar, but my nose told me there was some kind of alcohol in there somewhere. 

"And a fine Celebration it is," Milos said cheerfully, and slid several coppers across the bar. "Beer for me. And now that I've paid for it, you'd better drink it," he added to us, "or I'll yell at the top of my lungs that you're buying a round for the house in celebration of your engagement." 

My hands itched with the urge to introduce him a lot more closely to the bar—nose-breakingly closely—but long practice allowed me to master myself. I'd long ago decided I didn't want to be like Filia-mama, who tended to whip her mace out at the least provocation, and I avoided using my dragon strength in public because it made me stand out too much. 

I looked at Tina. We exchanged wry smiles and each reached for the nearest straw. 

It didn't taste too bad, really. Rum, some kind of citrus liqueur, a thin layer of something sweet, potent, and otherwise tasteless, and then, right below the whipped cream, something pinkish that evaporated on my tongue and left behind a tingle and a floral smell. That one made me feel a bit odd, kind of dizzy, and so I sucked up as much as I could of it to make sure Tina got as little as possible. If I got staggering drunk, I might end up getting sick in a gutter, or even robbed—although this was supposed to be the respectable part of town—but she would have other risks to contend with if she ended up in the same condition. 

Once the stupid cocktail was down to the whipped cream and phallic banana—Tina had eaten the cherry, making a slow tease out of it that had made my pants momentarily too tight—I ordered a plain beer before Milos could speak up again, and found myself staring down at my hands. Frowning down at them, really, because they looked wrong somehow. My shirt felt itchy and too tight, and I unbuttoned it at the collar and cuffs. 

"Val?" Tina was looking at me with a concerned expression. 

"I'm fine," I said. Wasn't I? 

"It's just that you've been staring at that green bottle like you think it should levitate over to you or something," Milos said, and I blinked. Green bottle? What green . . . ? I hadn't even noticed it, but something kept tugging my attention back in that direction. Not the green bottle, but something beyond it. 

Except that there was nothing but the wall beyond it. 

"Maybe I should go back to the hotel and lie down," I said. 

"I'll go with you." Tina grabbed her bag off the floor beside her stool. 

"No," I said. "Really, I'll be fine. It's only two blocks. And besides, we can't have you coming into my room. Your mother wouldn't like it. Neither would Filia-mama." 

I was a bit surprised that I wasn't unsteady on my feet, really, but since Tina sat down when it became clear that I wasn't wavering, I was just as glad that was the case. 

Outside the tavern, I turned to my left and began to walk. I wasn't in any hurry. It was a pleasant night and the stars were out and . . . 

_Where am I?_

This _wasn't_ the better part of town, and I suddenly wasn't sure how long I'd been walking. Longer than it would have taken me to get back to our inn, I thought. The buildings around me were rougher, and a lot of them had signs of garish painted glass, lit from behind by lanterns. The street wasn't unpopulated by any means, but most of the people walking past were men, dressed as fighters or labourers, a lot of them drunk. Women, most of them not wearing very much at all, called from second-floor balconies. 

It looked like I'd somehow ended up in the middle of the red light district. And yet something was still urging me on, as though there was a hook sunk into my breastbone, pulling me. I felt strange and lightheaded and turning back didn't seem all that important, so I decided to see if I could find the source of the pull. 

After a couple of blocks, the pull shifted to the left, and I turned down an alley. It felt like I was getting close to my goal, and I wasn't paying all that much attention to my surroundings. 

It wasn't until someone blocked off the end of the alley that I'd just entered from that I realized how stupid that had been. 

"Heh. Another drunken prettyboy. It's our lucky night, guys!" 

Light flashed off a knife blade, and I felt my mouth stretch into grin as my feet shifted on packed dirt, planting themselves more firmly. My hands seemed to curl into fists of their own accord. 

"Come try your luck, then," I said. Part of me was analyzing the situation—three of them, one of me, one knife about six inches long, two wooden clubs—and I could feel my heart pumping faster, blood almost tingling in my veins and making me feel euphoric. There was also a small part of me wailing that I shouldn't be doing this, but it really was very small, and even it knew these guys weren't just going to let me go. 

The one with the knife made the first move. My arm came up automatically in a hard block, and I punched for his jaw with the opposite hand. He jerked to the side, taking it on the shoulder, but there was the tiniest bit of fear in him now. I could see it—smell it—almost taste it, sharp and sweet like candied ginger, and I licked my lips. 

A hint of air pressure against my temple, and it was my turn to duck. I twisted, grabbed a wrist, and threw the owner forward over my shoulder. He went down hard, losing his grip on his club. I kicked the third man in the stomach, and he folded with a _whuff_. 

Then I felt a sharp pain in my scalp. The first man, with the knife, had grabbed my hair, wrapping long aqua strands around his free hand. 

"Now, here's what we're going to do," he began, then stopped again as I started to laugh. 

"Interesting," I found myself saying. "So you have a death wish, do you?" One elbow back, pressing against his chest, grip his wrist with the other hand, and there was a meaty tearing sound as his arm parted company with its socket. "I might have let you off easy," I continued as I unwound my hair from the disembodied appendage and dropped it. "But you just had to make it serious, didn't you?" 

The knife-man was moaning and trying to control the bleeding from his shoulder with his remaining hand. He wouldn't be able to. Something in me knew that. Unless he found a white or holy sorcerer within the next couple of minutes, he was dead. No one else moved, or made a sound. 

Then one of the men with the clubs pulled something from inside his shirt and pointed it at me with shaking hands. A gun. Rusty, not well-kept. I wondered if it was even loaded. 

"Stay back! Fucking crazy—don't you dare come anywhere near us!" And the two of them started backing away. I hooked my thumbs in my belt and let them go, one step, two, three . . . 

A large shadow loomed out of the night, and they both ran into it—into him. I saw it all in silhouette: the man with the club taking a wild, desperate swing at the stranger, a gasp and a heavy _thock_ like the butcher in Stor's Eve chopping up a pig as a massive arm rose and fell with something in its grip. Then the click of a trigger being pulled, not followed with the bang of a gun going off, and another _thock_. 

"Bunch of idiots," rumbled a deep voice. Then, "Val? Are you all right?" 

I should have known what to say, but the words died on my tongue . . . a name . . . there should have been a name . . . 

"Val? Shit— _Lighting!_ " 

The ball of light that flared between us had a red tinge to it, but somehow that seemed more comforting than ominous. And I instantly felt the same way about him. 

The man facing me had to be the tallest human I'd ever seen, well over seven feet, broad-shouldered and solidly built. His hair was long, a blood red even more startling than my aqua, and he had a craggy, striking face: strong chin, sharp nose, wide mouth, bushy eyebrows. He wore a garish orange-gold trenchcoat, and in his right hand he held a sword that had to be longer than some people were tall, with the bare blade propped against his shoulder. There was still blood on it. 

He should have been terrifying, but his expression spoke of concern, and the hook sunk in my chest dug into me and _pulled_ , and I found myself taking first one step forward, then another, until I was almost running. I staggered into him, grabbing onto his coat so that I wouldn't bounce, his left arm went around me, and finally, _finally_ , the strange urge that had drawn me here went away. 

I craned my neck to look up at his face. He looked more bemused now than anything. Then his nostrils flared, and he frowned. 

"You smell like astorflash herb—no wonder you're not all there. Idiot dragon. Sixty years of searching and I find you like this." 

I laughed. It seemed like the right thing to do. "It was probably in the drink. That's the last time I touch something someone else orders for me as a prank. Does it do this to humans?" 

He shook his head. "It makes humans a bit high, but the astral dissociation effect only hits dragons." 

"Guess I did something stupid, then." 

"Well, you're going to have a hell of a hangover." He sighed, but he was smiling now. That felt like a good sign. "Let's get you to bed. We can talk in the morning." 

"I don't want to go to bed." My hands crept up to his shoulders, and then laced themselves around his neck. Yes, this—this was right. Hold him, and pull him down, and . . . "Unless it's with you," I said right up against his lips, and then kissed him. 

There was no reluctance in him, no hint of him trying to push me away. Instead, he took over, his tongue pushing into my mouth, and by the Flarelord, he tasted _heavenly_. A wave of heat rolled through my body, and I found myself clawing at that damned coat, fingers fumbling for the buttons, not caring that we were in the middle of a dirty alley with three corpses. I just wanted to feel my skin against his. 

Fortunately, he kept his wits about him. "We're only about two blocks from the inn I'm staying at, and I'd rather have our reunion somewhere with a mattress. Just let me clean my sword off—" 

" _Don't leave!_ " The words escaped me when he let go of me and tried to straighten up, like blood gushing from a wound. Black terror was suddenly clawing at me. 

"I'm not going anywhere without you, Val. Here, hold my hand . . . fuck, I sure hope you don't remember this part in the morning . . ." 

I latched onto his hand with both of mine and let him pull me along. First he wiped his sword on the ragged clothes of one of the dead muggers and slid it into a scabbard he wore at an odd angle across his back. Then he towed me out of the alley and along a narrow street to the back door of a building with a very small sign painted directly on the wall: _Inn and Out_. It was the sort of pun that seemed to require a groan, and I offered my sacrifice to the humour gods as he fumbled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, then pulled me up a narrow flight of stairs and opened another lock. 

It hadn't been a big room to begin with, and the two mattresses on the floor, needed to provide sleeping space for someone as tall as my companion, pretty much shrank it to nothing, but I didn't care, because the moment he had the door closed behind us, he pinned me up against it and kissed me again, leaving me weak in the knees. 

I had never wanted anything as badly as I wanted him, and if I'd been in my right mind, it would have frightened me . . . but I wasn't, and the only thing in my thoughts was an all-consuming hunger. 

He shucked off his sword harness, propping the weapon against the wall, and unbuttoned that damned coat himself, hanging it on a peg. Underneath he wore a tan shirt that stretched tight across his muscled chest and thick biceps. _Ceiphied_ , he really was massive. Exactly the opposite of any woman I'd ever so much as considered courting. And I loved it. 

My shirt went next, and I groaned as his kisses began to move lower, down my neck. He bit lightly at the flesh over my collarbone, hard enough to leave a mark without breaking the skin— _his_ mark, he'd marked me, branded me as his, and knowing it sent another wave of pure heat through me. My cock was standing at attention, and we weren't even naked yet. 

He straightened up and took a half-step back, and I made to follow him, but he chuckled and put his hand on my chest. 

"Greedy dragon. Don't you want me to get my shirt off?" I licked my lips involuntarily, and he chuckled. "Good. This should only take a second . . ." He untied the laces and pulled it off over his head, tossing it in a corner. His boots followed after it a second later, leaving him wearing trousers and a worn pair of socks with a hole in one toe. 

The body underneath the shirt was everything I'd imagined and more, but there was also a rope of scar tissue that twisted down from his left shoulder to meander across his chest and down almost to the waist, purple and white and oh-so-wrong against his lightly tanned skin. I reached out to trace it with shaking hands. Horror swept through me . . . and anger. How could anyone have done this to him? _How?_

He caught my wrists, then pulled me in close against him. "Val, it's all right. He's _dead_ , Val. I haven't found any trace of him since I returned, on the physical _or_ the astral. Besides, it was partly my fault—I let myself get distracted. If I'd been paying closer attention, I would have been able to tell the little shit was there, hiding among the humans . . . he was never _that_ good at concealing himself." 

"But—" 

"Or is it just too ugly for you? I know I'm not really a prize in this form to begin with—" 

I jerked a wrist loose. Put my hand over his mouth. "Don't you say that!" I told him fiercely. "Don't you _ever_ say that." 

"You're biased," he told me as he pulled my hand away . . . but he was grinning again. "Fuck, I hope this is real," he added, more soberly. "Once your memory unscrambles, you might be really pissed off at me, though. After all, you purged yourself somehow and went back to being just a dragon . . ." 

_Just_ a dragon? But part of me seemed to know exactly what he was talking about, so it didn't seem worthwhile to ask. "Does that mean you want to stop?" 

" _Hell_ , no. I figure either nothing will have changed in the morning, or this'll end up being our last time . . . and either way, I'm not going to miss it." He bent and gave me another toe-curling kiss. This time, his hands closed over my shoulders, fingers probing until he found the sensitive points where my wings were rooted and began to massage them. "Let them out, Val. I want to see them." 

They burst through the skin without my even willing it, and a few soft, feathery black scales drifted down onto the floor. 

"Mmm . . ." Those big hands were parting my featherscales with care, rubbing callused skin lightly over the delicate membrane underneath, sending a wave of unexpected pleasure crashing through me, and I cried out, shaking with the intensity of it. I'd never imagined my wings were so sensitive, but I'd also barely had them out since I was a baby and hadn't understood why I had to hide them. Some of that sensitivity even seemed to transmit itself down between my legs. I would have sworn I could feel every thread in the fabric still pressing against my cock, not to mention the growing wet spot right against the leaky tip. 

"You've lost muscle," his deep voice rumbled, hands sliding away from the bases of my wings, feeling along my sides. 

"How can you tell?" I gasped, still shaking. My wing muscles were well below the surface in this form, to keep them from forming obviously unhuman shapes under the skin. 

"The contour's wrong. Never mind, we'll build you back up." 

I wasn't prepared for the warmth that flooded me at the thought— _he still wants me by his side!_ —or the shame. "We've been apart for so long—I never even looked for you—" 

"Since I'm supposed to be _dead_ , I can't exactly blame you. If anything, _I_ should have found _you_ faster, but it took me nearly sixty fucking _years_ to put myself back together after what happened, and by then it would have been surprising if you _hadn't_ disappeared, since I'd bet everyone was after your ass. And we're both here now," he added, with a smile. "Call me vain, but I hope you at least missed me." 

"Every moment." And if part of me said that was right, and part said it was wrong . . . I didn't care to waste my time sorting it out right now. 

"Mmm." He seemed intent on exploring every inch of my upper body with his hands. I'd dug my fingers into his shoulders when he'd started playing with my wings, and I relaxed them now, tentatively beginning my own examination, tracing the contours of his muscles. Humans, no matter how muscular, normally felt a bit soft to me, a bit . . . squishy, but even when I allowed myself to dig my fingertips in a little, his body was beyond firm. A bit more pressure, and he growled and bit my ear, just hard enough to pinch. 

He unbuckled my belt, and I felt my trousers begin to slide down my hips, leaving my ass bare. At the front, they caught on something . . . rather sensitive, but thankfully, he picked up on it and lifted them away from my body, easing them down past my aching erection. He cupped my ass in his hands for a moment, almost kneading it, and I felt a strange shudder of anticipation run through me, and then there was a feeling of pressure at the base of my spine and my tail popped out. 

I saw a bushy red eyebrow rise and fall, as though I'd surprised him, but his touch didn't falter. In fact, he pulled me forward against him and began to explore the extra appendage I'd just sprouted, fingering my scales and the sensitive skin in the crease where the underside of it connected to my body. I rubbed myself wantonly against his leg—the pressure in my groin was getting to be too much, unendurable, and the friction helped. 

But he pulled back again. "Not so fast. Don't I get a turn?" 

All I could manage in reply just then was a disappointed, "Gh!" 

The touch of his lips was almost familiar now, and I drank in the flavour of him as though he were water and I was dying of thirst in the desert. While I was occupied with that, he undid his belt and let his trousers down as well, then guided me down until I was sitting on the mattresses. Automatically, I spread my legs wide, and he settled on his knees between them. 

"Can I . . . ?" My hand ran down the last couple of feet of his hair and found the ring holding it into a semi-manageable tail. 

"Since when do you need to ask permission?" he retorted, and there was that grin of his again, the one that seemed to say, _I'm an asshole and I know you love me anyway._

Maybe at another time my mind would have stuttered over one of those words, but just then it seemed entirely right. _Love you,_ I thought as I slid the ring out of his hair and ran my hands through it until it poured over his shoulders in blood-red rivulets. _Love you._

"Do you mind if it's on your back?" he asked, sliding his hands under me to cup my ass again. "I know it isn't as comfortable for you when you have your wings out, but I want to see your face." 

At the back of my mind, something trembled, wondering what the hell I was about to let him do to me, but it was small and easily silenced, drowned by a flood of lust. "I want to be able to see you, too," I said truthfully. 

"At least there's plenty of room, so you shouldn't end up with them twisted up under you," he said. "I still remember that one time when we were down south, and the only room we could get was the size of a closet . . . you bitched at me afterwards for _days_. Come on, now . . ." His grip shifted so that he had one hand just above my tail and the other between my wings, and I grabbed his shoulders again as he started to lower me down, his chest pushing against mine. Every so often he would move a fold of wing gently outward to keep it from being trapped under me. "You have no idea how much I've missed you," he said at one point, nuzzling my ear. 

"Feels like a dream," I murmured back, and it did—one of those dreams where everything makes sense until you wake up. 

Then I was down, lying underneath him with my wings spread, half-open, to either side. My legs slid around his waist as he leaned down to kiss me again, pinning me helplessly in place. It was that helpless feeling that made me groan and twist, feeling his cock rubbing against the underside of my tail as mine pushed against his stomach—I knew without trying that heaving at him with all my draconic strength wouldn't have shifted him an inch. 

"Perfect," he muttered, and shifted, sitting back again. My tail was so overstimulated that I barely noticed him stroking at the crease again until his hand shifted and I felt the beginning of a gentle but inexorable pressure on an orifice that had never been opened from the outside before. 

His fingers were well-slicked (with what? The thought floated through my head for a second before vanishing again) but big, and I felt a burn as the first one pushed inside me. I panted as my muscles fluttered around the intruder, too weak to push it out again but too desperate not to try . . . and at the same time it wasn't enough. There was something in me that wanted to be forced wider and wider, splayed and stretched, instead of the steady sensation of the digit pushing in and out, stroking me from the inside until I started to relax again. 

The second finger should have burned more but didn't, and I cursed thickly as his hand began its steady work again. With some work, I managed to snake the tip of my tail back over his leg and wrap it three times around his wrist, then tried to draw him into a rougher rhythm, thrusting hard then pulling back slowly, but as I'd somehow known, I wasn't strong enough to budge him. 

"Eager little dragon. Under other circumstances I might give in, but given how long it's been, you might rupture something." 

"Don't care," I gasped. _Ceiphied_ , I was going mad, my body trembling, my cock on fire, a volcanic build-up of pressure inside me . . . and yet I couldn't come. Not yet. It wasn't time yet. 

"You'll hold," he said. "You're strong—do you think I would want a weakling? Do you think I _could_? There's no fun in fucking someone you could break, unless you enjoy breaking people for its own sake. I never did. And . . . you're not really fighting me all that hard." And there was that smirk again. 

I bared my teeth at him, feeling them lengthen into dragon fangs, and growled. No, I wasn't, because I knew it would just make everything take longer . . . but I so wanted to wipe that expression off his face. But at the same time, I didn't. It was too familiar, too beloved. 

I clawed at his arms as the third finger went in, all too aware my reactions were becoming pure dragon, and I fought to hold on to the essentials of my human form. Especially the size. Popping the roof off the inn was not a good idea, some part of me was managing to keep sight of that much. It took immense concentration to hold on to that against the waves of pleasure flowing through me, though. 

When he pulled his fingers out at last, I snarled at him, hating the empty feeling. 

"Just a moment," he said, leaning forward. I could feel his cock, thick and heavy, lining itself up, the very tip pressed against me, tantalizing me. "I can never get enough of you like this, pinned underneath me and still not able to be anything but so very, very hungry . . . and you're right on the edge of trying to bite my nose off, aren't you," he added with that smartass grin. "All right, then. Ready or not, here . . . I . . . come." 

I howled as he filled me, because there was no hesitation this time, no patient stretching. Instead he pushed straight into me with a growl of his own, filling me much more deeply than his fingers had gone, and he was huge and thick and I was being split open and it hurt so good—and _fuck_ , what had it just rubbed against? Something that made another powerful wave crest and crash through me without actually releasing anything. The pressure inside me was beyond immense, and I thrashed as a sudden hallucination took me: in full dragon form in a place of swirling darkness, I lay awkwardly on my back beneath a huge red figure, in a position that left me hopelessly vulnerable. Six blue eyes bored into me as the gigantic three-headed dragon fucked me, growling softly the whole time, black lightning crackling around him—around us. It danced over my scales, leaving behind a burning tingle that was somehow as much pleasure as pain. 

The central head slowly dipped lower until our noses were almost touching. I could feel the warmth of his breath, the wet trail his tongue left behind as he licked my jaw. "Val." His voice shook the heavens and the earth. "It's time now, Val. Come for me." 

My body understood before my mind did, spasming violently, and I roared and exploded, white lightning fountaining from my exposed cock. White and black touched, and the hallucination faded in a blaze of gold and dropped me back into the reality of an inn room and mattresses on the floor and the ecstatic release of tension as I splattered my seed all over the stomach and chest of my red-headed lover. _So good . . ._ He growled low in his throat, and I felt his release flood my body. It was warm, far warmer than his skin, even after it left him, and I shuddered as I felt the heat soak into delicate internal tissues, pleasurable but bizarre. 

My fingertips were pressed hard against his skin, and I wondered if I should offer to heal him, because he had to have talon-wounds all over his back and arms, but all that came fuzzily to my lips, after several seconds' thought, was, "Are you all right?" I was starting to feel very tired. 

"Of course I'm all right," came the instant response. "Idiot dragon." He was pulling out of me now, and even softening, his cock would have done a horse proud. The tiniest of hand gestures erased the sticky mess from our skin, and I wondered what kind of spell he'd used. I rolled over onto my side, rearranging my wings carefully but too tired to be bothered with pulling them in, and he grabbed a folded blanket and shook it out, then lay down facing me. 

I snuggled up against his chest, my tail coiling automatically around his leg as he covered us both with the blanket. I fell asleep in his arms, feeling utterly wrung out and absolutely content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't think that _quite_ justified tagging this as "dragon sex", although one of the others will need that, when/if I get that far.


	2. Chapter 2

My first thought the next morning was that the sun was coming from the wrong direction. _Oh, inn, right,_ my sluggish brain furnished a few moments later, and I hid my face against the firm, warm pillow I was curled up with, and tried to doze off again. 

Sleep wouldn't come, though, especially not when I realized that my wings and tail were out and my ass was sore and that what I was resting against was definitely not a pillow. The arms curled around me, barely noticed a moment ago, felt like a prison now, but when I tried to slip out of them, my bedmate spoke up. 

"Just a sec—if you try to sit up now, you'll probably throw up. Astorflash hangover is pretty fucking nasty. _Dicleary!_ " 

The spell did make me feel better, I had to admit—less fuzzy. 

" _Now_ you can sit up, but you might want to keep your eyes closed while you're doing it." 

His arms withdrew, and I took his advice and sat up slowly with my eyes closed. I felt a bit dizzy at first, but it passed off. It was difficult to find a comfortable position until I got up on my knees, which allowed some clearance for my tail and kept the really sore part of my ass from touching anything. Cautiously, I opened my eyes. 

My lover of the night before was sitting not far from me—left leg splayed out at an angle, right knee bent with his arm resting on it. The pose seemed designed to both command space and give me an eyeful, although given the sheer ridiculous size of his morning wood, he might have had a hard time hiding it completely without any clothes on. His hair was still loose, leaving bloody rivulets trailing down over lightly bronzed skin. My other impressions of him hadn't changed. He was still a craggy-faced muscular colossus, and that grin I remembered so vividly from the night before was currently fading from his face. 

He shouldn't have been attractive, but even in his lazy, resting pose, there was something about him that tugged at me. 

"What's wrong?" he asked, one bushy brow rising. "You're not usually so lost in thought when you first wake up." 

"I . . ." What the hell was I supposed to say? "Give me a moment. I'm still . . . feeling a bit fuzzy." I reached up to rub my forehead and almost put my eye out. At some point last night, my arms had gone dragon all the way to the shoulder. I shuddered and reverted them, drawing in my wings and tail at the same time. 

If I'd been digging _those_ into his back, he should have bled to death before the sun came up, but there was no blood under my fingernails. I hadn't pierced his skin, even though my talons could shear through boiled leather as though it were nothing. 

What was he? I'd hallucinated him as a three-headed dragon last night, but to the best of my knowledge, there was no such creature. And I'd been drugged at the time—Flarelord only knew what _that_ might have done to my perceptions. 

_You know, Val, when you've just had a one-night stand with a total stranger—a_ male _total stranger—that you met in an alleyway in the red light district while high on some weird herb you've never heard of before, the minor question of whether he's part troll or just uses protection enchantments during sex is_ not _supposed to be the first thing on your mind,_ I told myself. _So . . ._

I couldn't really claim he'd taken advantage of me, I decided. Well, sort of, a little bit, maybe. He'd known I wasn't quite in my right mind . . . but he'd also thought that I was someone he knew, someone he had an ongoing relationship with. And I'd had the same feeling about him, and more. 

The person I had been last night had loved him, deeply and unconditionally. I couldn't call it anything else. And now, it was just . . . gone. Or was it? I still felt comfortable in his presence, although this moment should have been beyond awkward and he was a hardened killer. 

Oh, _Ceiphied_. How could I have forgotten? In that alley last night—pitting my full dragon strength against that mugger and tearing his arm out and leaving him to bleed to death— 

"What's wrong? Damn it, Val, talk to me!" There was a sharp tone of command in that voice, and I found myself answering it automatically. 

"Nothing makes sense. I think I'm losing my mind. Did I really kill a man last night?" 

"Looked like it to me," came the easy reply. "I'm surprised it bothers you, though. Just another piece of human trash, and I doubt anyone but the two of us saw anything. If someone did, you can reasonably claim self-defense." 

I stared down at my hands. _But how did I . . . ?_ Somehow, with the astorflash in my system, I'd known how to fight. Somehow, I'd been emotionally hardened beyond the point of caring about the destruction I was causing. Even now, all I really felt was a vague unease, a touch of nausea. 

I looked up at the red-haired man, who was watching me, greenish-blue eyes fixed on my face. 

"How do you know my name?" I asked him, and watched those bushy brows jump like a pair of startled caterpillars. "Why can't I remember yours? I don't understand." 

He looked sharply at me, and then down. " _Fuck,_ " he said, his voice sounding oddly tight, as though he was afraid of something inside him breaking if he strained it too much. "I should have known it was too good to be true, finding you again after this long . . . there had to be a catch." A pause. "Are you happy with your life now? Or were you until you walked into that alleyway last night, at least?" 

"I thought I was," I said tentatively. 

"Hmph. Then I think maybe it's better if you let it go. Think of last night as a drug-dream, nothing more, and I'll just walk out of your life again." 

"A dream wouldn't have left me with a sore ass," I retorted, and was relieved to hear him chuckle. The expression of misery he'd been wearing didn't fit his face. "I thought I was happy," I repeated. "Now I'm just confused. I don't know what I want. Can you . . . give me some time?" 

He was frowning at nothing now. "Of course I can . . . but . . ." 

"But?" 

"Call me suspicious, but given the number of people after my ass—and _not_ the way I'm after yours—" He flashed me a quick leer. "—I can't help wondering if there's something going on here. Reveal myself on the expectation that you would support me in a fight, and then have you not know who I am . . . It reminds me of something that asshole Xellos would set up." 

"You know Xellos?" I asked, startled. 

His eyes narrowed. "Yeah, but I'm surprised _you_ do, if your memory's been sealed." 

"I wish I didn't. He shows up at our shop every few months and causes trouble. The golden dragon I've been living with usually runs him off." I knew, somehow, that I shouldn't refer to Filia as _mama_ in front of this man. Besides, she was really only my foster-mother, given that we weren't even the same species, and this weird conversation was making me question if she was even _that_ , really. 

"So you're being monitored by both sides. That makes it more likely that you're authentic, and not just a Copy set up by Xellos to bait me into a trap. They're probably worried about your memory coming back, although Zelas might be planning a little recruitment on the side." 

I blinked several times, trying to assimilate this. I mean, I knew Xellos wasn't just _any_ Mazoku—he was the Beast-Priest, the second-in-command of Beastmaster Zelas Metallium. And by extension, he didn't set up traps for just anybody. Especially not elaborate traps decades in the making. 

Whoever this man was, he was important. Or he thought he was. He could be insane. 

"If you _are_ being monitored," he was saying now, "it's probably better for you to return to where you were while I figure out what the fuck to do. If anything. I'm pretty sure that tonight really was a giant coincidence, or they would have attacked while we were distracted. If we're really lucky, they'll believe you if you say you wandered around town for a while and then checked yourself into the first random inn you found to sleep off whatever it was you drank." 

"I understand." _If I'm being watched . . ._ It was difficult to imagine Filia Ul Copt as some kind of . . . of spy? Jailer? But although she'd told me the story of what had happened to the other Ancient Dragons, their deaths at the hands of her own clan, she never had told me how she'd found my egg. I'd always assumed I'd been hidden away by my real parents under some kind of preservative spell, but what if that was wrong? What if I'd had a whole other life that I'd somehow forgotten? 

My lover of the night before touched the massive scar that ran down from his left shoulder absently. "I owe Xellos a good ass-kicking, but there's no particular hurry. He understands the concept of delayed revenge just as well as any other Mazoku. Hopefully whoever did this to you gets it too, because when I find out who they are, I'm going to turn them into a fine powder." 

"I didn't ask you to take revenge for me," I said. 

"Who said it was for you? This is about them stealing the last thing I still had that was worth anything. Fuckers." He sighed. "I suppose it's possible you're just burnt out on revenge, subconsciously. You did spend hundreds of years trying to figure out the best way to take out an entire clan of golden dragons all by yourself without starting another Kouma War." 

"I . . . did?" 

"That's more than I should have said, probably. The more you know, the more difficult it's going to be for you to let this all go." 

"And if I decide I don't want to let it go?" 

" _Val._ " He growled my name more than spoke it. "Stop flirting with me. I promised you time, but I'm not exactly known for my self-restraint, and I'm getting pretty fucking close to grabbing you and doing everything in my power to put you back the way you were. I owe you a lot and I'd like to see you happy . . . but when all's said and done, I'm also a selfish bastard and I want you by my side." 

Flirting? It wasn't how I would have put it, but once he'd said it, I understood what he meant: I'd been dangling the prospect of going back to . . . whatever it was he thought I had been . . . in front of him without actually committing to anything beyond thinking it over. 

"Sorry," I muttered. Then, "Are you ever going to tell me your name?" 

"It's better if I don't. Xellos is more likely to ask you about me by name, after all, and this way you can answer honestly that you don't know any such person. You've probably got enough clues by now to figure it out if you really want to." 

"Does that mean you're famous?" I asked, putting a bit of a sneer into my voice because I thought it might amuse him. 

Sure enough, he flashed me that grin again. "Infamous, _I'd_ say, although I've been out of circulation long enough that most people have probably forgotten about me. The information should still be out there if you can be bothered to look, though. Now. You need to get that cute dragon ass of yours in gear, get dressed, and head back to wherever it is you're supposed to be, or someone _is_ going to notice." 

I found my shirt in one corner, trousers in another, my vest under _his_ shirt and my boots behind the door, but there was one thing that eluded me: at some point last night, I'd lost the tie that held my hair back, or maybe it had been snapped. Either way, there was no finding it now. I grimaced and ran my fingers through it. It was a tangled mess anyway. Maybe I should have cut it shorter, but it had never quite seemed like the right thing to do, somehow. 

"Let me," a voice like warm gravel said, followed by the gentle tug of a brush. I sighed and submitted. He was quick and efficient at the job—I suppose dealing with my hair was easy when compared to the care his knee-length mane needed. When he'd brushed it out, he gathered my hair together in one hand and pulled it through something, and a moment later, I felt the touch of cold metal against the back of my neck. A hair-ring, searching fingers told me. Maybe even the one I'd taken off him the night before. It rubbed lightly against my skin, beginning to warm. 

I turned to face him. At some point he'd found his trousers and pulled them on, but he was still barefoot and bare-chested, with his hair loose. 

"I'm going," I told him. 

He nodded. "Take care of yourself. And whatever you do, don't trust Xellos. It's true that he rarely tells a _direct_ lie, but he's an expert at lies of omission. If you need my help, you should be able to contact me with a Vision spell if you put enough power into it." 

_Sneaky,_ I thought with a half-smile, touching the hair-ring again. There are a couple of different ways to focus an astral communication spell, but using something that belongs to the target is easiest. 

There was more to this man than it looked like there should be. A lot more. 

" _You_ take care of _yourself_ ," I said firmly. "Even if I don't . . . choose you, that doesn't mean I want to see you hurt." 

He sighed. "Stubborn dragon. _Fine._ I'll be careful. For now." 

I found myself unable to actually say _good-bye_ for some reason. It was like it caught in my throat. So did _see you later_. I suppose saying either one would have felt too much like making a choice on the spot. In the end, I just let myself out of the room, then out of the building. 

The red light district looked even more tawdry in the sunlight. I had to ask an old man sweeping the street for directions back to the inn I'd been meaning to stay at with Milos and Tina. He gave me a near-toothless grin, and told me, giving me a slow once-over and noting every wrinkle in my disheveled clothes in a way that made me flush angrily. I had to close both hands around my belt to keep from hitting him. 

I'd hoped to sneak back into the inn unnoticed—it was early, after all. But I hadn't counted on Tina being worried. I only noticed the personally-tuned ward on the door the moment _after_ it went off, and after that, running away would have been pointless. 

"We were starting to think you'd been mugged in an alley somewhere! How could you have been so careless!" Tina had grabbed me by the shoulders and was shaking me, or trying to. I was too heavy for her to actually shift me, heavier than a human of my size. 

"It was the fucking _drink_ ," I growled, ignoring the fact that I _had_ been mugged in an alley, more or less. "One of those liqueurs affected me in ways it wouldn't have done to most people." And I was going to have to try to find out exactly what "astral dissociation" was, and why it had not only destroyed my inhibitions, but altered my personality and taught me how to kill people with my bare humanform hands. "After a couple of hours, I pulled myself together enough to realize I needed to sleep it off, and checked into the first inn that I found. Under the circumstances, trying to get a message to _anyone_ was the last thing on my mind." I glared at Milos, who was standing behind Tina. For once, he looked contrite. "I came back as soon as I'd gotten my hangover under control." 

"Well, _I_ think you were with a girl," Milos said, grin beginning to return. "I mean, you got that hair ring from somewhere, right?" 

"I won it in a dice game," I growled. "I think. I was still seeing purple monkeys at the time, so I'm not really sure." Thankfully, my red-haired lover had been discreet—with my clothes on, there were no visible marks of what we'd been doing, as I'd verified in a fountain on the way here. I'd have to be careful about taking off my shirt for the next couple of days, though. "It was in my pocket this morning when I woke up, and I couldn't find my hair tie, so I put it to work." 

"It doesn't really suit you," Tina said. 

I shrugged. "Well, I like it. So I'm keeping it." 

She shook her head. "Stubborn." 

"I have to be, to stand up to you," I retorted, and she laughed and hugged me. 

I put my arms around her in return, but . . . well, I suppose some kind of comparison was inevitable. She was smaller, softer, and not weak, but weak _er_. Squeezing her with my full dragon strength would have smashed her ribcage. And yet she still felt comfortable leaning against me, and I patted her back. Carefully. 

Milos vented a cheerful wolf whistle. "Come on, now, you two lovebirds—if we want to get home before midnight, we have to leave soon, and Val still hasn't packed." 

And so we all traipsed upstairs to set things in order before we left the inn.


	3. Chapter 3

Stor's Eve is at least an eight-hour walk from anywhere, or at least that's what it seems like. The last four hours are spent following an otherwise-disused road up into the hills. Actually, the road _did_ go somewhere else once—if you can trace it far enough, there are some pretty substantial ruins, or so I've heard, but whatever city once flourished there was destroyed in some long-ago war. No one even remembers what it used to be called. 

Filia-mama would have preferred to live somewhere more cosmopolitan, I think, but it's difficult to pretend to be human when you don't seem to age, and in bigger places, there always seems to be someone who both notices and cares. Regardless, Filia-mama had developed a habit of moving every so often . . . until she'd ended up in Stor's Eve and discovered that the villagers there just didn't give a damn. About that, or about much of anything else that didn't have to do with sheep. 

Walking through the middle of nowhere has its share of problems. You're less likely to get run down by a runaway stagecoach, true, but if something does go wrong, it can take a long time for anyone to find you. I kind of liked the peace and quiet, though. Or it would have been peaceful and quiet without Milos along. The town clown was bound and determined to liven up our time together . . . although to the extent he did, it was mostly by accident. 

Walking backward on a narrow, unmaintained road with ditches at the edges is Not A Good Idea. However, it took landing on his ass in a mud puddle with a frog sitting on his head for the town clown to finally pound that information into the empty space between his ears. After that, he walked facing forward, mostly on Tina's far side, but getting him to shut up was, as always, an uphill battle. 

"—still think you were with a girl," Milos was saying as he waved a hand in front of my face to get my attention. 

"I was _not_ with a girl. I don't think I even got within ten feet of one, unless she was wearing a purple monkey costume." The important part of that was true, anyway. 

Absently, I touched the metal ring holding back my hair. I was going to have to have a closer look at it when I got a little privacy. It was probably just a piece of jewelry, but . . . 

"You say that, and then you start primping," Milos said. "Face it, Tina, you've already lost him." 

Tina rolled her eyes. "Mi, stop being a prat. Although you have been touching that thing an awful lot, Val." 

"It's just that it's odd," I said, figuring it couldn't hurt to tell them this part of what I was thinking about. "It's too light-weight and too hard to be silver, or pewter or tin for that matter. I suppose it could be pure nickel, but that's pretty unusual. The colour's wrong for most steels, and anyway, who makes something like this out of steel? I'm going to have Old Man Jeric have a look at it tomorrow." Jeric was one of the few inhabitants of Stor's Eve who had spent more than a few days at a time on the outside—he'd had a successful career as a jeweler and finesmith in the city. After he'd retired, he'd returned to settle in his childhood home in the village. He'd forgotten more about different styles of jewelry then I would likely ever know. 

"Huh. I think it's just—" Milos broke off in mid-sentence as an arrow came arching down from somewhere to bury itself in the road in front of us. 

" _Windy Shield!_ " I snapped while Milos and Tina were still staring. It was the strongest protective magic I knew against physical attacks, but I was painfully aware that none of us had any weapons, and Filia-mama had never taught me any attack spells. I wasn't sure she even knew any. "Run for it, but stay close to me!" I added, knowing it was our best chance. 

The road snaked down into a narrow valley between two hills here, and we rounded a bend and nearly crashed into a fallen tree that had clearly been placed where it was on purpose. The road was blocked, and while the slopes to either side were climbable, I didn't want to try it with an archer taking aim at us and who knew how many hostile people waiting for us at the top. Casting a Ray Wing would require leaving us uncovered for several seconds, because not even a dragon can cast two complex spells at once. The tree was an oak as thick as my waist, not easily breakable even for me, not in this form. And I couldn't return to being a dragon without squishing Tina and Milos (if I stayed in Windy Shield range) or leaving them uncovered for the archer. My breath weapon was useless against physical targets—I'd never wished for a golden's Laser Breath before, but oh, I did now. 

Surrender wasn't a possibility even if they offered to leave us alive. I didn't care about what money we still had on us, but Tina . . . well, she was young and pretty and I didn't want to think about what a bunch of bandits might do to her. 

Footsteps. Someone was coming down the road behind us, blocking us in. They rounded the bend in a ragged line of four abreast. Their leather armour was shabby, but their weapons, three swords and a mace, gleamed in the afternoon light. 

"Careful, Boss!" came a shout from above. "The green-haired one's a sorcerer!" Which might have been a deterrent if we'd been inside the old Mazoku Barrier. 

"Boss" must have been the one left of center with the big saber and the scraggly black beard, and he was the one who replied, "Never met one of those yet who could fight." 

"Try me," I growled. If I let my arms and hands go dragon, maybe I could take down at least one of them . . . I'd be able to slice through their armour, at least, and my scales would provide some protection from their weapons . . . _If only I'd at least learned to cast Flare Arrow . . ._ I was not going to just roll over and die for these sons of bitches. I was not! 

The prickling began in the back of my neck and spread down my left arm to my hand. Energy squirted from my fingertips to form a ball against my palm, dark green and crackling ominously. I wasn't sure how I'd created it or even quite what it was, but it felt weapon-y and so I threw it. 

The explosion was good and loud, and the bandits nearest to where the ball had landed—the one to the far right, and the one beside Boss—went flying over the hills to land who-knew-where, probably in pieces. Boss himself was blown clear, landing in a bush halfway up the hillside. 

" _Kill him!_ " 

Meanwhile, I was staring at the crater in the road and trying frantically to replicate what I'd just done without canceling the Windy Shield, as arrows rained down around us and the fourth bandit picked himself up and began to charge forward— 

And there was a black flicker in the air and a resonant _crack_ as the bandit's sword met a staff that hadn't been there a moment before. 

"Xellos!" I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or worried . . . or pissed off, because it wasn't impossible that the bastard had set us up—either to get a little fear, anger, and bloodlust for lunch, or for some deeper purpose. 

"It's been a while, hasn't it, young Val? Are you having trouble with these? I'm surprised." 

"I'm not a fighter," I growled. 

"Aren't you? You did make a very nice crater over there, if I'm not mistaken. Although I'm not sure if wielding your power the same way a Mazoku would is good for you in your current state—" 

"Somebody get rid of that fucking priest!" the boss bandit yelled. 

"Oh, dear," Xellos said, then added, in a cheerful tone of voice, " _Bomb di Wind!_ " 

The resulting gust sent the bandit Xellos had crossed weapons with flying off toward the horizon. A dozen or so arrows shot up and began to arc downward, but Xellos countered them with a multi-target Flare Arrow, cast with a negligent hand gesture. 

"You _idiots_!" Boss yelled at the top of his lungs, pulling himself out of the bush and staggering back down toward the road. His trousers were torn, and I could see boxers spangled with—oh, _Ceiphied_ , were those little hearts? 

The image of a certain red-haired man wearing nothing but boxers with little hearts on them and an arrogant grin displayed itself in front of my mind's eye. _Damn it, get out of my head—this is_ not _the time!_ And besides, I knew for a fact that he went commando . . . 

"Source of all power, crimson fire burning bright, gather in my hand and become an inferno," Xellos intoned, although he needed to intone Chaos Words to cast a spell about as much as I needed a hang glider to fly. " _Burst Flare!_ " 

The bandit boss blinked as a ball of light appeared at his feet. 

It was the last thing he would ever be able to do. 

_Whomph!_

The eruption of flame left behind a pile of fine ash, right on the edge of the crater I'd blown in the ground. The sad melted lump that had been Boss's sword bubbled beside it. 

There were several moments of silence. Then screams came from above, and there were sounds of rustling brush. 

"Oh, my," Xellos said, turning to face us. "Do you think I overdid it?" 

"That depends on exactly what you meant to do," I said. "In this case, I doubt those idiots will stop running until they fall into the ocean. What are you doing here?" 

"I can't come and check up on you and Filia? Such a hurtful thing to say . . . " 

"The last time you were here, she brained you with her mace," I pointed out. "And the last time you were in Stor's Eve, or at least the last time you showed your face around me, was three years ago. I can't believe you suddenly turned up now for no particular reason." 

"Mmm, well, not _no_ reason, perhaps." 

"Then why?" 

"I'm afraid that—" 

" _Don't say it,_ " I growled. "If I so much as here the word 'secret' cross your lips, I'm going to see if I can make another crater. Right under you." 

"And you claim not to be a fighter." Xellos' eyes opened just the least slit. "Where did you get that thing you're wearing in your hair? It doesn't suit you at all." 

"He won it in a dice game," Milos said, and I did my best to throttle down my relief in case Xellos noticed it. Instead, I flooded my mind with irritation, which tended to be easy to come by around the Mysterious Priest. 

"I don't care if it doesn't suit me," I said. "I like it, and I intend to keep it. On the other hand, I don't like you." There was something about Xellos that made anger gather in a hot, hard knot inside me, ready to explode outward at the least provocation. 

Shoulders sagged under his black cape—the Mazoku Priest did do a very good imitation of a human being. "Well, now, that's harsh. Especially considering that I've been asked to offer you an invitation." 

"I don't want it. Wait a minute— _that's_ why you came here?" 

"Well . . . not really. I've been holding onto it for quite some time, actually." Xellos' grin widened, if anything. "It was to be tendered once you started showing evidence of real power." He nodded toward the crater, and his expression became serious. "My mistress wishes to meet you." 

I felt my eyes widen slightly. _Oh, shit._ "Tell her . . . that I need some time to think." That seemed to be my answer to everything these days. 

Xellos' eyes opened, and met mine squarely. "Well, she didn't actually _tell_ me to escort you immediately . . . but I wouldn't wait too long. She isn't the only one with an interest, you know, and you're going to have to choose a patron sooner or later if you don't want to have to fight _everyone_. Although given your temperament, perhaps that's what you _do_ want. But I'll give you a couple of weeks to consider your options. You might consider using part of it to put your affairs in order." 

His eyes closed again, and he gave us a jaunty little wave before disappearing. Right in the middle of the road, in front of Tina and Milos. _Shit!_ How was I supposed to explain any of this to them? 

Of course, knowing Xellos, he was counting on that. 

"Val, are you okay?" Tina put her hand on my arm, and a cracked-sounding laugh bubbled up from my throat. I hadn't even realized I was shaking until she touched me. "Val?" 

"I don't get it," Milos said. "A bunch of bandits turn up and you're . . . not _calm_ exactly, but not freaking out either. And now some weird priest tells you his boss wants to see you, and you come unglued." 

"You have no idea," I said. _Zelas might be planning a little recruitment on the side,_ rumbled a well-remembered voice. How had he known? "Were you sleeping when they covered cosmology in temple school?" 

"Mostly," the miller's son admitted. "What does that have to do anything?" 

"'Priest' isn't a title that's only used by people who direct the worship of the Dragon Gods," I said. "Some of the highest-ranking Mazoku use it too, and the only Mazoku more powerful than Xellos are the Dark Lords themselves." 

Milos blinked. "Then his 'mistress' is—" 

"The Beastmaster, Zelas Metallium," I said. "And if she wants what he seems to be saying she does, I'd rather kill myself than meet her. Or Dynast or Deep-Sea Dolphin, either, and he seemed to be implying that they're interested in me too. _Fuck._ " 

"I don't get it." 

I sighed. "You wouldn't. Remember what he said about my _choosing a patron_? Beastmaster wants me to work for her. What I don't understand is _why_. To my knowledge, a Dark Lord trying to recruit a dragon is pretty much unprecedented." 

There was a long pause while the siblings exchanged looks. 

"So that's what you are," Tina said at last. "We'd wondered." 

"We're getting to the point where it would have had to come out soon anyway," I said. "One way or the other." Except that I hadn't thought that far ahead—I'd just let it slip. Which wasn't like me. But then, what about the past twenty-four hours was like me? "I admit there aren't a lot of the specific kind of dragon I am left—" To be exact, there was one. As far as I knew, anyway. "—but go back a thousand years or so and there were hundreds of us. I can't see why the Beastmaster would suddenly get so interested now, unless she's decided she wants a taxidermied specimen before we all die out." 

"Ugh," Tina said, nose wrinkling. 

"If you're a dragon, why didn't you just, well, _go_ dragon on all those bandits?" Milos asked. 

"Because the protective spell I cast against the arrows has limited range, and dragons are big. I would have had to either leave you uncovered for several seconds, or squished you." 

"Oh." There was an awkward silence as they looked at each other again. 

"Um, can I . . ." Tina blushed and looked down at her feet. 

"She means, can we see what you . . . look like?" her brother asked. 

I thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. "I doubt there's anyone else nearby, so why not?" Tina would need to see me sooner or later, if we were going to . . . have anything together. Milos . . . well, he wasn't fleeing in terror, anyway. It would be nice to have someone besides Filia-mama that I didn't need to hide from. "Just give me a second to open up enough space that I won't squish you by accident." 

Shapeshifting in the dragon way isn't a spell. Really, going from my human form to my natural one was more like relaxing a muscle that I'd kept tense for far, far too long. Feeling my skin scale over, my spine lengthen, and my wings spread was almost as good as sex. 

_Really?_ a deep voice seemed to say. 

_Shut up._ But it wasn't surprising that I would think of him. He'd loved my wings, my tail, even my fangs and talons. Featherscales rustled softly as those wings shivered, remembering his touch. 

"So?" I said, looking down at Tina and Milos. 

She startled. "Your voice . . ." 

"I have a wider throat and a deeper chest in this form. Not to mention a completely different mouth and tongue," I added. "It would be weird if I sounded the same." 

Tina made a tiny motion, as though starting to reach forward, and then pulling back. 

"It's okay," I said. "Touch me if you like. You'd have to work hard to hurt me, unless you did something obviously stupid like trying to poke my eye in." 

"But you're naked—" Tina covered her mouth with her hand as he said it, and went bright red. Milos smothered a laugh. 

"Scales count as clothes," I said firmly. 

"If they didn't, no one would ever have seen a dragon," Milos pointed out, apparently well on the route to recovery. "I mean, even if you just wanted a thong, it would take a whole bolt of cloth, wouldn't it? Are all dragons that big?" 

"It varies. An older dimos dragon might be twice my size, but a new hatchling isn't that much heavier than a human toddler, just differently shaped." I leaned down and nudged Tina, as gently as I could, with my nose. She staggered, grabbing on to me instinctively to keep her balance. I _whuffed_ out a breath, and she giggled nervously as the warm air ghosted over her. "I spend most of my time in my human form, and the only other dragon I've ever met is Filia, so I might not be the best person to ask questions of," I added. "My people died in a war with another group of dragons, so it's important that I stay hidden." 

"You're _fluffy_ ," Tina said, touching one of the patches of featherscales that crested near my eyes. 

"Really?" Milos leaned in on my other side. "I'll be damned—I didn't know dragons had feathers." 

I rolled my eyes, but I knew that Milos would be Milos. "Other kinds of dragons don't. Now, if you two don't mind, this road isn't _completely_ deserted, and I'd like to change back." Carefully, I lifted my head a bit, and they stepped back. 

I had to struggle with myself in order to revert, which surprised me a bit . . . but I'd barely returned to my real form in the last seven or eight years, since I'd gotten too big to hide easily in the woodlot, and maybe my body wasn't happy with that. 

"You look uncomfortable," Milos said. 

I shrugged. "It feels like . . . wearing a suit of clothes that's just a little bit too small, maybe. Not painful, but . . ." Another shrug. 

"And you do that nearly all the time? That's got to suck." Milos looked as sympathetic as he ever got. 

"It isn't as though I have a choice. If other dragons find out about me, my life might be in danger." As the last ancient dragon, I _should_ be more powerful than any other single dragon in the world, but that didn't mean I was stronger than thirty or a hundred or ten thousand of them, especially untrained as I was and reluctant to fight. 

"Hiding doesn't seem to have done you much good with the Mazoku," Milos pointed out. 

"Xellos knew Filia before I was even hatched, so there wasn't anything I could have done to hide from him. I just always thought he was more interested in her than in me." 

"Maybe it has to do with, well, _that_ ," Milos said. "He said something about you coming into power, and about you using your power like a Mazoku would . . ." 

"That part was just him trying to wind me up. Drawing that kind of comparison between a dragon and a Mazoku would be considered obscene by both sides." I tried to sound confident. I didn't want them to know I was lying. Mazoku "spells" mostly dealt in raw astral force, Xellos had told me once. The explosion hadn't happened because I'd cast a spell, it had happened because some kind of energy had leaked out of me. Even if it hadn't been the _same_ kind of energy, it was too close for comfort. 

Tina took my hand. "I don't know what's going on either, but I promise we'll find a way to get through it, together." 

I was always a bit startled when she made me feel warm that way, when something inside me seemed to open up. It was a really good feeling, one that it sometimes seemed I couldn't get enough of. 

Filia-mama had used to wrap me in those warm, fuzzy feelings, but lately it seemed as though she was trying too hard, her smiles brittle and her hugs too tight. I'd thought it was because she didn't approve of Tina, but could she have known about this—about the Mazoku? 

_So you're being monitored by both sides._ Something in me accepted everything that man had told me as truth. Was Filia my foster-mother . . . or my jailer? 

"Can you fly?" Milos asked suddenly, and I suppressed a groan. 

It was going to be a long afternoon.


	4. Chapter 4

"It's an unusual piece," Old Man Jeric said, balancing the hair ring across the palm of his hand. "Very unusual. From the weight, I'd guess that the metal's titanium. You see it in elven jewelry, now and again, but elf-work is usually ornate, not like this. And the stone . . ." He shook his head. "It's intaglio work, probably carnelian, but you usually see those in _finger_ -rings—they make good seal-stones because hot wax doesn't stick to them. Also, it's set slightly recessed, probably as protection from wear, and this design . . ." 

"Looks like a two-year-old's scribble drawing," I completed for him. 

"Mmm. Except you wouldn't etch runes into the border of a scribble-drawing, would you?" 

"Runes?" 

"You didn't notice 'em, with those sharp young eyes of yours? Well, I _did_ spend a fair portion of my career squinting at things smaller than my fingernail . . ." 

"What do they say?" I asked patiently. 

Old Man Jeric shrugged. "How should I know? I never learned to read more than the common script. It can't be much, though, because it's only five letters. Here, I'll write 'em out for you. Just keep in mind they're written in a circle, and I can't tell where the start and end are, so you might have to move some letters to get 'em to make sense." 

The five runes he wrote on a slip of paper seemed like gibberish to me—RVGAH—but I pocketed it anyway. Maybe rearranging them would at least produce something pronounceable. 

"Is the carving an . . . intended . . . part of the ring, or something that was added later?" It was the only thing I could think of to ask. 

"Intended, I think. There's no obvious way to take the stone from the setting—this isn't modern work, where we design with the expectation we're going to have to replace the things—and while there's wear over the entire surface of the ring, there's nothing around the stone in particular. The intaglio is skillfully executed, despite the design. My guess is that your hair ring probably _really_ old, maybe even pre-Shinma-War, but you'll never be able to prove it. And it _might_ have been made by an elven smith for a non-elf, since they're the only ones who work in this stuff. I doubt you'll ever find out for sure, though, and without its history, it's worthless except for the metal." 

"Thanks," I said, and held my hand out for it. 

"Oh, not at all—it's rare that I get something to really exercise my wits on these days. If you win something else interesting in another dice game, be sure to bring it by." The old man gave me a toothless grin as I gathered my hair and drew it through the ring again. 

I had a shift behind the shop counter after that, so I headed on up the hill to the Vase and Mace (Mark 8). Since it was summer, we had the tent up out front, with some of the less-expensive, non-antique pottery on display in the open air. The door to the shop was open, so that whoever was on duty could watch both areas without too much difficulty. 

Jaleine waved at me as I entered, then, without waiting for me to wave back, left the shop proper to go out to the pottery studio. Instead of getting paid for watching the shop, she preferred to exchange three four-hour shifts a week for access to Filia-mama's kilns. Most of what she made, she ended up smashing, although last month there had been a couple of sculptures that she'd been satisfied with. They'd been sort of abstract and wiggly and . . . weird, but Jaleine claimed to be an _artist_ , not just a potter. When you could get her to talk at all, that was. 

I perched on the stool behind the counter and took the slip of paper from my pocket. RVGAH, I read again. I needed to break up that opening group of consonants. VGAHR was no better, but GAHRV looked like it might at least be pronounceable. If I applied the corrections Filia-mama had taught me for really old runic texts, I would first drop the H, giving GARV, and then turn the AR into AA, giving GAAV— 

My eyes widened. Gaav. _Maryu-oh_ Gaav, the Chaos Dragon, the renegade Dark Lord who had been killed in a struggle with the other Mazoku, spearheaded by Hellmaster Phibrizzo. 

_Since I'm supposed to be_ dead _. . ._

I'd slept with a Mazoku. I'd slept with one of _the_ Mazoku. 

Why wasn't I being sick all over the counter? 

Someone stepped through the open door of the shop, and I immediately crumpled the bit of paper and stuffed it back in my pocket. 

"Excuse me . . ." About my height,. Male. Blonde and golden-eyed and wearing an old-fashioned tunic and trousers in pale fabrics too heavy for Stor's Eve during the summer . . . and not human. I tensed. With that hair and those eyes and that astral presence, he had to be a golden dragon. And he had to have noticed that I wasn't human either, although he might not be able to pinpoint my exact species . . . 

I forced a smile. "How can I help you?" 

"I'm looking for a woman named Filia Ul Copt." 

"She should be in the back," I said. "If you'll wait here for just a moment, I'll get her." 

"There's no hurry," said the strange dragon. "Are you Val Ul Copt?" 

"What if I am?" I asked, feeling my eyes narrow. 

"Then my business here is equally with you." 

"You may know my name, but I don't know yours," I pointed out before he could say anything else. 

"My apologies—that was rude of me. I am Milgazia, of Dragon's Peak." His deep nod wasn't quite a bow. 

"And?" I prompted. I didn't like this man—this dragon, rather. There was just something about him that left a bitter taste on my tongue. 

"As Elder of my community, I would like to invite you to join us—both yourself and Filia." 

I blinked. "Is this a joke?" 

There was a momentary twitch at the corner of Milgazia's eye. "I assure you, it is not. I'm aware of the bad blood between the ancient dragons and the golden clan serving Flarelord Vrabazard, but we were never part of that. Even if we hadn't been cut off inside the barrier, I would never have permitted it. We who serve Ragradia were never so foolish as to believe we know what is best for the world." 

Not a joke then, but something far more sinister, given the timing. 

"Dragon's Peak is a mixed community of golden and black dragons," Milgazia was saying. "We also have cordial relations with the nearby white and dimos clans. We welcome all greater dragons, regardless of species." 

"You sound like an advertising brochure," I said, and Milgazia acquired a slight frown. I wondered what it would take to make him really angry. "I'm not interested in moving. I've lived here since I was hatched. This is where my roots are. This is where my _friends_ are. Your offer is the least attractive one I've received in the last few days, really." 

Milgazia's eyebrows rose. It was easy to tell, because they were almost as bushy as . . . _Don't think about him._ "Might I ask who made these other offers?" 

"That . . . is a secret!" I said, waggling my forefinger, and was rewarded by seeing his face go white. So he knew Xellos too. Lately, it seemed as though everyone I met did. "I think it's clear that I'd be a liability to your community, Elder Milgazia, when I'm drawing that kind of attention. Even if you wanted to protect me, the chances of you doing so _successfully_ aren't high, and I don't have the training to be much help. I don't need a stack of dead dragons on my conscience, even if they are goldens." 

I half-expected Milgazia to instantly retort with something like, "It's our _job_ to protect our comrades," and when he didn't, I actually gained a measure of respect for him. He might rub me the wrong way, but it looked like he at least wasn't _stupid_. 

"This does seem to be more complicated that I had expected," he said at last. "The offer stands, but if you choose to accept it, we will need a little time to . . . put stronger non-interference plans in place. But if you accept that _other_ offer . . ." He didn't finish the sentence, but then he didn't need to. Dragons and Mazoku were supposed to be enemies, after all. 

"I'll keep that in mind." 

I managed to repress the sigh until Milgazia had left the shop. 

_What in hell am I going to do?_

As far as I could see, there were four options, and all of them involved at least one element I really didn't like. 

Accepting Milgazia's offer meant leaving my home and placing myself in the hands of golden dragons. While these might not be the _same_ golden dragons who had slaughtered the rest of my people, if even one of them shared those others' low opinion of ancient dragons, I might end up fighting for my life. I'd never know where danger might come from, so I'd have to be on constant alert. Living that way sounded horrible. No, I could rule the dragons out. 

Accepting Xellos' offer would be just as bad in a different way. Not only did the idea of joining the Mazoku side of the eternal war between Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye disgust me at a visceral level, but I doubted the Beastmaster would accept anything less from me than the absolute obedience she forced on Xellos. I'd have to give my will over completely whenever I was working, and there was no guarantee that there would ever be any time off. Combine that with the _type_ of orders she'd be likely to give, and I doubted it would take me all that long to lose my soul and become nothing more than a Val-shaped golem. _I'd prefer to be dead._

Accepting Gaav's offer, if my red-haired lover really had been the Chaos Dragon himself, would be . . . complicated. On the one hand, he wasn't on the Mazoku side anymore, and he had seemed genuinely fond of me and concerned for my well-being. He might even agree to protect one tiny village and make it our base if I asked him to. But I knew there were strings attached. He'd want me in his bed again, and the idea made me feel ill. (Didn't it? Shouldn't my stomach be turning over about now?) That was the first string. The other was that he'd want to restore the memories I was missing, or that he thought I was missing. It wouldn't be transformative in the same way as what the other Mazoku might do to me, I was pretty sure. I'd felt very much like myself while I'd been under the influence of the astorflash, just . . . a larger, harder-edged self. It hadn't been so bad, and some of what I had right now might survive. It wasn't a _good_ bargain by any stretch of the imagination, but given the alternatives I couldn't just cross it off the list. As patrons went, the Chaos Dragon seemed to be the only one who would offer me both safety and some measure of self-determination. 

The fourth choice was to run like hell and hope that no one was interested enough in me to spend a lot of time and trouble tracking me down . . . well, Gaav might, but I had a feeling he'd keep his distance if I made it clear I didn't want him to approach me. I'd lose Stor's Eve, but not my life or my soul, and Tina might even agree to come with me. But it was risky. 

Eventually I might accrue enough power of my own to make the Mazoku wary of approaching me, but I wasn't even sure where to start. Attack spells maybe, but that meant running to either the Barrier Peninsula or one of the rare schools of magic on the outside, with no guarantee that I could learn strong enough spells quickly enough to protect myself, or find a teacher who was willing to work with someone in my position. 

And if I didn't go with any of those, I'd be left to grasp at straws. Ask Filia-mama for help, and hope that she knew some kind of spell I could use against the Mazoku and wasn't so deeply involved in the dragon agenda that she'd try to force me to go with Milgazia. Pray to the Dragon Gods for deliverance. Try to fake my death— 

I blinked at the realization that I didn't like that one because I suspected Gaav would genuinely grieve for me. _He's Mazoku,_ I told myself. _Turning away from Ruby-Eye does not make him one bit less of a Dark Lord. He doesn't care about anyone else. He can't._

A couple of days ago, everything had been so simple. I'd been in love with Tina, and intending to make a life with her here—I knew a lot of utility spells of different kinds, and I'd enchanted most of the weapons sold at the Vase and Mace for additional effectiveness and durability. It wouldn't be that difficult to build up a product line. In a few years, I'd have people coming up here from the city to buy from me, since there were so few mages in this part of the world— 

"Val?" Filia-mama poked her head in through the door that lead to the kitchen, not the one that led through the storeroom to the backyard. "I was going to make herbed chicken for supper tonight, but it turns out that I'm out of some things, and I was wondering if you could go down to the dry goods store for me. I'd go myself, but we're about to light the fire in the kiln." Which meant that she wanted to stay nearby in case something went wrong, even though Jaleine and the others had been doing the setup for years. 

"Fine," I said. "Do you have a list?" 

A few minutes later, I stepped through the door to the dry goods store and immediately turned to the right, ignoring the fabric that took up the larger part of the floor space. I passed the bags of rye flour from who-knew-where and nearly tripped over the bin of prunes, which was sticking further out into the aisle than it should have been. The fabric must have had a better profit margin, because it was given plenty of space while the food was all crammed together. Really, the place should have been two separate stores. 

The dried herbs were at the back, near the much more expensive imported spices. They lived in premeasured quantities in waxed-paper envelopes inside wooden boxes, and everything was labeled and colour-coded, but not in any particular order that I could identify. Thyme and savory were prominently placed, but marjoram wasn't, and it took me a while to find it, skimming past basil, tarragon, astorflash— 

I froze, staring at the box. Re-read the label. 

_Astorflash._

Slowly, as though my hand was moving on its own, I reached out and opened the box, revealing a dozen dull yellow envelopes like the two already in my hand. Even more slowly, I picked one up. 

I'd looked up "astral dissociation" at the library this morning, and even the most informative text I'd found had been less than helpful: "A condition in which the link between the subject's astral and physical bodies becomes rotated or skewed, causing them to come into contact at different points than they would normally. It does not normally cause distress, and no treatment is required." 

I wasn't sure how that related to what had happened to me when I'd drunk that herbal liqueur, but if I took the stuff again, it might . . . well, really, I didn't know what the hell it would do to me. But I couldn't bring myself to put it down. 

I took it up to the counter along with the thyme and the savory and the pink packet of marjoram, and the store owner's daughter didn't even bother to read the labels, just tallied packets by colour and charged me four bronze and two copper. I waited until I was outside to tuck the herb packet into a separate pocket and slip an extra bronze piece from my own wallet into Filia-mama's change. Then I stuffed my hands in my pockets and began to climb the street back toward the Vase and Mace. 

I was just about at the corner at the top of the hill when someone called out to me. "Val! Hey!" 

I turned. "Tina! I thought you were supposed to be sewing flour sacks today." 

"And you were supposed to be looking after the shop," she said, coming to a stop not two feet away from me. 

I shrugged. "Filia-mama sent me on an errand." 

"And we ran out of cloth. Turned out that a couple of the bolts they sent us last time had holes in them. Big ones that have Mom checking the storeroom for exotic moths. So I figured I'd go up to your store . . . I mean, it isn't like you're that busy right now . . ." 

"We're not," I admitted, and offered her my hand. She took it with a smile, and we started off again together. 

"Say, Val." 

"Hm?" 

"I, um, I need to ask before, um, things get any more serious . . ." 

"Go on," I told her. She was blushing quite a fetching shade of pale pink. 

"Is it possible for a dragon and a human to have kids?" 

"Not without some heavy-duty magical assistance, most of which has far-reaching implications for both the child and the mother. Even crossing two different species of dragon rarely produces children. We can always adopt." I grimaced and added, "I asked Filia-mama about that when it started looking like things between us were . . . getting more than casual. She _really_ didn't look happy when she told me, but I hope that was just because she knew she was effectively telling me I couldn't have kids at all." 

"Oh." 

We walked half a block in silence. I was realizing I had a question for her, one she wasn't going to be happy with. But it was also something I needed to know. 

_It isn't going to get any easier, so just spit it out,_ I told myself. "Tina, if I have to leave Stor's Eve to get away from the Mazoku, will you come with me?" 

"I . . . oh . . ." Tina shook her head. "I guess it _is_ the next logical step, isn't it? If you don't want to give in and you don't know how to fight back. At least that way Miss Filia and Milos and everyone else might be safe." 

"You don't have to answer me right away," I told her. "I know just how big a step it is. But it's the only way I can think of that we might be able to stay together." 

She smiled crookedly. "This is where the heroine from one of those novels my mother likes so much would swear to follow you to the ends of the earth, isn't it? I always did think they were total flutterheads." 

I snickered. When I'd claimed the books in question couldn't be _that_ bad, Tina had snuck one out of her house and loaned it to me. By the time I'd reached the second chapter, I'd been reading it with the sort of fascination I might have felt for a particularly grotesque accident. And then I'd hit the euphemism-smothered sex scene and almost wet myself laughing. Granted, Tina had admitted afterwards that she'd found the worst one she could, to teach me a lesson about making pronouncements about things I knew nothing about, but . . . 

"Isn't there some way you can fight back?" Tina was asking. 

"Xellos slaughtered thousands of golden dragons during the Kouma War," I said. "Theoretically I'm more powerful than a golden, but I don't have even minimal combat training. I need time, and there aren't very may ways I can get it. Running is the easiest . . . or at least it leaves the most possibilities open. The alternative is finding some other power that Beastmaster won't risk going up against, and hiding behind it—and there's no way I'd be able to do that with no strings attached. I mean, there's no way I can climb Valwin's tower and hide under his hat until all the nasty Mazoku go away." 

That made Tina giggle, as I'd intended. 

"If you feel you can't come with me, say so," I continued. "I don't want you to be unhappy. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to come back someday." 

I knew it wasn't likely, though, and she knew it too. Even though she didn't say so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you check the Planes Chart artwork on Kanzakadex, Gaav's name actually is written as "Gahrv" there, but no one ever romanizes it that way ("Garv" sometimes, but never with an H). Which meant I felt the need to come up with an excuse for the inconsistency.
> 
> Oh, and I have nothing against romance novels in general. _Bad_ romance novels, on the other hand, are really easy to poke fun at.
> 
> Four more chapters, so we'll be hitting the end of the 'fic on Sunday.


	5. Chapter 5

_The shop was often quiet on rainy days, and I was supposed to be taking advantage of the time to analyze a grimoire I'd quite unexpectedly found in the city, but somehow my heart wasn't in it, and I found myself staring at the page with my eyes unfocused, mind wandering._

_I looked up in surprise as the door opened, the bells on the knob jangling. "Can I help—" The words came automatically to my lips, and then died._

_He filled the door from top to bottom and side to side, grinning at me. "Hello, Val." Drops of water clung to his hair and the shoulders of that awful coat of his, and he shrugged and shook his head, scattering them. His heavy boots drew a soft creak from the floor as he stepped inside, nothing more. "And here I thought you'd be happy to see me. Was this a bad time?" The grin said that he didn't really care._

_Meanwhile, I was frozen where I stood, with my mouth open and my blood running for the south side of my belt. I should have been terrified or disgusted, with a Mazoku in the room with me who had clear designs on my virtue, but all I really felt was horny._

_"I—" I began, but I couldn't find anything to add to it. "I—" I tried again, and then stopped, because he'd reached the counter now and was leaning over it, cupping my cheek in one big hand, the pad of his thumb stroking my lower lip._

_He chuckled. "I take it you at least missed me. You look like the top of your head's about to blow off."_

_He leaned further down and in, and I moaned into the hard, hot kiss he gave me, feeling limp in the knees._

_"Do you want me?"_

_"Yes!" The word went straight from my cock to my tongue, without even passing through my brain, much less stopping to take up momentary residence. If my brain had been in control, I wouldn't have said it. Or so I told myself._

_"Sex-starved little dragon. All right."_

_"I am_ not _little!" I snarled at him as he stepped around to my side of the counter, but he just laughed._

_"Only by comparison, I suppose. Really, you're just the right size." His hands slid over the small of my back to cup my ass, and I moaned and arched my back. "Did you ever realize that this counter is at just the_ perfect _height?"_

_"That's just because you're so ridiculously tall." My brain seemed to be catching up with my body, slowly._

_"And here I thought it was made with the two of us in mind." He chuckled and ground up against me, so that I could feel that huge cock of his through all the layers of cloth still separating us. "You know," he said, curling his body around mine as he slid his hands between me and the counter to undo my belt, "anyone could come in here at any moment and catch the two of us like this, with you ready to take my cock . . ."_

_I whimpered, feeling myself harden even further as he pulled my trousers down around my knees, carefully pulling my cock out with one huge hand. He was right: anyone in the village, anyone at all, could walk in and find us like this, and the thought just made the whole thing more exciting. I ground into his palm with abandon, then cursed him as he withdrew his hand, and again as he grabbed my hips and lifted me, arranging me so that I was half-lying on the counter with my ass sticking out and my legs dangling down. The height just barely allowed my toes to touch the floor, and my cock was caught between my belly and the wooden surface._

_"Perfect," he said, slapping my ass, and I growled outright at him, feeling the vibration deep in my chest. My hands became talons as I grabbed at the wood, fighting not to slither awkwardly off as cloth rustled behind me. Then he was spreading my ass, running his thumb over my hole and pushing just a little way in. "Feels like you're loose enough."_

_A moment later, something much larger was pushing into me, and I howled and felt wood splinter in my grip. Pleasure with an edge of pain, driving me to the brink of madness._

_"L-lord G-gaav . . ."_

_"I'd like to make you beg, but if I tried, we'd still be here tomorrow, wouldn't we? Stubborn dragon. Anyone who hasn't seen you like this would never believe you were such a wanton creature."_

_"Bastard," I hissed._

_His rumbling chuckle filled the room. "All Mazoku are. You know that." He pulled out and then pushed back in again, with me trying not to whine and hump the counter. "Don't lie to yourself, Val. You love this. You always have. Your body knows, even if your mind's forgotten. You may not choose it in the end, but you'll always want it."_

_"—force me—" I couldn't even turn that into a sentence, but he seemed to understand._

_Another hard thrust left me gasping and crying out. "That's the one thing I'll never do. If I tried, I'd lose the part of you that's most important to me. It has to be willing. If all I wanted was a warm body, well, I can generate slaves by the hundreds of thousands. I could even make one that looked like you . . . felt like you . . . but it would never fucking_ be _you. So you have to choose."_

_And at that moment, the door to the shop opened. I stared at it, not quite understanding at first, not quite recognizing the figure standing there staring back at us._

_The tableau broke as she raised her hand to her mouth. "Val . . . you . . ."_

_"Tina, I can explain," I said, reaching out toward her with my right hand. My taloned right hand, with splinters clinging to the fingertips. She jerked back._

_"How can you possibly explain_ this _? It's obvious that you're not what I thought you were . . ." Tears were trickling down her face as she turned to leave again._

_"Tina, no, wait! Tina!"_

. . . and I woke with a jerk to find myself reaching toward the ceiling. My hand really had gone dragon, and I glared at it for a few seconds before shifting it back. There was a lump in my pajama pants too, but it was gradually going down now that I couldn't . . . feel myself being fucked . . . anymore. 

With a snarl, I threw back my blankets and left the bed, calling a Lighting spell so that I could see to find the window and throw it open. I sat down straddling the sill, with one leg inside and one dangling down against the side of the building. Filia-mama would have been pissed off if she'd seen me like that. She wouldn't be pleased to see that I'd gone to bed without a shirt on again either, but it was a warm night and the areas of skin that corresponded to the bases of my wings had been feeling tender again. 

Maybe I really did need to revert to my true form more often, because there were times it seemed like my body was trying to tell me something, but getting far enough away from the town that I wouldn't be seen required an hour or more of scrambling through the hills. Being a dragon often seemed like more of a nuisance than anything. While I couldn't say there were no benefits—longer lifespan, greater-than-human physical and magical strength—hiding it was difficult, and the amount of trouble it would attract if people found out . . . 

I snorted softly. _There are Dark Lords breathing down my back—seriously, how much more trouble can I be in?_ And from one point of view, that was true. From others . . . I'd never been among my own kind. My social interaction had always been entirely with humans. Being _other_ made me feel like a freak. Unfortunately, I knew I would have been _other_ anywhere, even at Dragon's Peak if I'd been fool enough to accept Milgazia's offer. I was the last of my kind, and there was no way I could change that. Well, other than cloning myself, and I couldn't see how that would do any real good. It wouldn't produce any female ancient dragons, or a population diverse enough to make my species viable again. 

There was always an ache deep inside me when I thought about that. As though I owed something to my family, to my clan, to a bunch of people that I'd never known. Even though it wasn't my fault. Or was it? If I really was somehow missing part of my memory . . . hell, I might even be the one who had sent the goldens off with a flea in their ear. 

"And even if I was, what in hell am I supposed to do about it?" I asked the night. I could spend the rest of my life searching the world for ancient dragon body parts to create clones from, assuming that there were any substantial remnants left. I had a sudden eerie vision of a hallway lined with dragon skulls, and shook my head. _Ugh._ Although if I were going to be traveling around anyway, there was no reason I couldn't search for any remains that did exist. Cloning, though . . . I didn't know much about it, but I was pretty sure it involved some substantial apparatus. Not something I could carry around with me. And hiring the job done would no doubt be expensive, and it would require me to return periodically to the location of whoever I hired. One day I might walk in and find Xellos perched on the edge of the cloning vat. 

I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself. I hadn't even decided—really decided—whether I was going to run or not. 

_Don't lie to yourself, Val. You love this. You may not choose it in the end, but you'll always want it._ I growled softly in irritation. Had that really been the voice of my subconscious, dressed up as a Dark Lord in a disgustingly gaudy trenchcoat? Regardless, I knew what he'd said was true: I _had_ loved the sex, more than I would have thought possible. But that didn't make him any less of a Mazoku. 

I loved Tina. 

(Didn't I?) 

I didn't trust Gaav. 

(Do I?) 

All Mazoku were liars. If I wanted an example, I just had to look at Xellos. The Beast-Priest managed to lie like a rug without ever telling a literal untruth. Gaav might _seem_ more genuine than Xellos, but he'd had thousands of years more in which to cultivate a persona. He had been the leader of Shabranigdo's armies. The bluff warrior act had probably served him well in that role. 

Tina might still be assimilating the "dragon" part of what I'd told her, but I knew her feelings were genuine. There was no way I would give that up to become a Dark Lord's bed-toy. 

Had I been able to use my powers in a Mazoku way because I'd been contaminated with Mazoku semen? Ugh, what a thought. Well, so long as I stayed away from him, maybe it wouldn't happen again. 

I mean, I could talk to Tina about our sex life, couldn't I? About what I enjoyed. Even if she found it a bit perverted, I doubted it would turn her off me that much. Or if I left here alone, I could find myself another guy with a big cock and train him to suit. 

_Did I really just think that?_

Outside the window, the sun was coming up. Just now, the sky was the exact shade of Gaav's hair. _I'm never going to be able to get you out of my head, am I?_ I couldn't believe I was so fascinated with . . . well, I couldn't claim he was the ugliest bastard I'd ever met, but he wasn't pretty, either. Handsome, maybe, in a rough-hewn, intensely masculine way . . . _I am not going to think about that._

I wanted so badly for what I'd felt for him that night, and what he'd seemed to feel for me, to be genuine. Even now, I felt like I was wading at the edges of a vortex, fighting not to be pulled in. If I let myself remember his face, his touch, a grinding pain came to life in my chest and made it difficult to breathe. 

I could hear movement outside in the hall. That would be Filia-mama getting up to check on the kiln. Which was as good an opportunity as any to talk to her in private. 

I dumped my pajama pants and dressed quickly, taking special care to find a shirt that was soft enough not to irritate my wing-bases. Then I headed outside. 

The house and the shop were connected together in an L-shape, with the kiln inside the L, far enough from the main building that the heat from the bricks when it was fired wasn't likely to make anything burn. Filia-mama was standing right by the kiln itself, with her hand on the bricks. 

She jumped a bit when I cleared my throat—I suppose she'd been concentrating on the temperature rather than keeping an eye on her surroundings. "Val? I don't think I've ever seen you out here this early." 

"I need to talk to you," I said. 

"Let's go inside and have some tea, then, because I get the impression that this is important." Tea had always been her cure-all. It didn't have the soothing effect on me that it did on her, but it would be nice if at least one of us was calm for this. 

At the kitchen table, I reversed one of the chairs and sat down straddling it. 

"Are your wings hurting again?" Filia-mama asked as she put water on to boil and measured out some tea leaves. 

"Yes, but that isn't what I wanted to talk about." 

"Then is it about Katina Miller? I . . . can't say that I entirely approve of you being involved in a cross-species romance, but she seems like a nice enough girl—" 

"She _is_ involved, but peripherally." 

"Now you're starting to worry me." 

"And I'm very worried," I said. "A lot of odd things have been happening to me over the past few days. It looks like I'm going to have to leave the village soon, for everyone's safety." 

Filia-mama froze for a moment in the act of reaching for a teacup. "What are you saying?" 

"Did you take me in so that you could spy on me for the dragons? I already know Xellos has been keeping an eye on me for the Mazoku." It tore at me to say it, but I couldn't leave the question unasked. 

"You— That's— I most certainly did not!" Her tail popped out with such force that it ripped her skirt. "How could you even think such a thing, Val Ul Copt!" 

"I didn't really think you were, but the possibility was mentioned to me and I had to be certain." The kettle was boiling, but neither of us moved. "We ran into a bunch of bandits on our way back from the city the day before yesterday." 

" _What?!_ Why am I only hearing about this now?!" Her tail was so straight and stiff it would have made a good tentpole. Hopefully she'd realize soon that it was lifting her skirts. "I . . . think I'd better finish making the tea." 

I nodded and waited in silence while she poured out boiling water and brought the cups and pot to the table. She poured the first cup off weak, cradled it in her hands, and sipped. 

"Now, what's this about bandits?" 

I shrugged. "There were about a dozen of them, I think. I . . . killed a couple of them." 

"Oh, Val . . . I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. You should never have had to do that. Is that why you've been . . . out of sorts, this past couple of days?" It was exactly the conclusion I had expected her to jump to. 

I held up a hand. "I'm not done yet. The fact that I killed them doesn't bother me all that much, but _how_ I killed them does. A ball of energy just sort of formed in my hand. Without my casting a spell. It blew up when I threw it. Xellos, when he turned up a couple of minutes later to mop up the other bandits, said I'd used my powers like a Mazoku. And then he invited me to Wolf Pack Island to meet his mistress." 

She looked horrified, but not surprised. So she did know something. I'd suspected as much. 

"It gets worse," I continued. "He also said that she wasn't the only one interested in me, and that I would 'have to choose a patron sooner or later' if I 'didn't want to have to fight _everyone_ ,' which I assume means all the remaining Dark Lords. A dragon named Milgazia turned up at the shop yesterday with an offer of patronage as well." I decided to take a bit of a chance. "And there's a name that keeps on coming up in all this: Gaav." 

Filia-mama sipped her tea very, very slowly. I gave her a few moments to let what I'd said sink in. 

"It's obvious that there's something not right about me," I continued. "And there's a question that, in retrospect, I don't know why I never asked before: Filia-mama, exactly where did you get my egg?" 

More tea. I waited. 

"It fell from the sky," she said at last. 

I gave her a narrow-eyed glare. "If you're going to lie to me, you could at _least_ show me enough respect to come up with something plausible. I'm not a hatchling anymore." 

"It isn't a lie, Val. Your egg did come from the sky, but . . . it wasn't a proper egg." She sipped at her cup again, and I was barely able to keep myself from screaming and grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. "I suppose I'd better try to tell it in order." 

" _That might help._ " The words came out with an underlying growl that I couldn't quite repress. 

"Well. You understand that I wasn't a witness to all of this—a lot of it happened before I was born. Some of it we pieced together later, with Jillas' help, and some of it we guessed, and some we'll never know about." 

"Get on with it." Jillas . . . there was a gravestone with that name chipped into it out back behind the kiln, and there was a photo in our family album of a fox-man wearing an eyepatch. I knew he'd been there while I was in the egg, but he'd died before I'd hatched. Still, I had a vague and blurry memory of an accented voice calling me "Lord Val". 

Filia-mama sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. "I've told you what happened to the other ancient dragons." 

Since she seemed to be waiting for an answer, I said, "They were slaughtered by the goldens. Your people." 

She shivered. "Yes. You were the only survivor . . . but you were a grown dragon, not just an egg. You almost did die, but Maryu-oh Gaav ran across you somehow and saved your life. In the process, he turned you into a Mazoku chimera." 

I felt a shudder run through me as a number of things suddenly made sense. _I do belong to him, or I did. He probably thinks I still do._

_That_ was what the cost of my memory would be, if it was ever restored: I'd know, then, what I had done in his service. Which had probably been abhominable, given what he was. 

"In that form, you were as powerful as Xellos—in fact, you almost killed him once. But you weren't . . ." Filia-mama seemed to force herself to sip her tea. "When I met you, you were angry and bitter and . . . bleeding inside. You were obsessed with revenge—against my people, and against those you considered responsible for Gaav's death. One of whom was Lina Inverse." 

_The extraordinary genius sorceress who killed both Hellmaster Phibrizzo and a piece of Shabranigdo._ "I think I'm starting to see the direction this is going in." 

Filia-mama nodded. "There was a confrontation, and . . . well, I'm not sure _anyone_ was ever a match for her once she got into combat mode. We thought you had died, but for some reason you were sent back as an eggling. We're not even sure by _who_ . . . although Lina always said it had to be _Her_. The Golden One." 

Which meant Chaos personified, the Lord of Nightmares. Why such a being would give a damn about me, I wasn't sure. Maybe it was just that the complete loss of the ancient dragon species would have made the world a less diverse, and therefore a less chaotic, place. 

The tea was well on its way to becoming tar as I poured myself a cup with shaky hands and sipped at the bitter stuff. "It does explain a lot," I said slowly. "Even if the memories are gone from my conscious mind, I might have kept some reflexes that kicked in when I realized I was in danger. And a servant strong enough to fight Xellos on equal terms would be of incalculable value to the Dark Lords." And the desperate need I'd felt to seek Gaav out and cling to him while all those memories had been hovering right at the edges of my mind . . . after the massacre of the other ancient dragons, he must have been all I had. I'd probably gone a bit crazy when I'd lost him. "Which means that, unless I want to accept one of them, which will happen on a cold day in hell, I need to find a way to harness the power I have for myself. Do you know any spells that could help?" 

Filia-mama looked down at her cup. "The only spells I know that could damage a Mazoku are all holy spells." 

Which meant that I wouldn't be able to cast them, since I wasn't a priest or a paladin and had little faith in the Dragon Gods—I believed they existed, but not that they cared about anyone or anything outside themselves. My people had been slaughtered by Vrabazard's followers, which meant that either the Flarelord had actively encouraged them or just hadn't cared enough to stop them, and I wasn't sure which possibility I hated more. 

"If this had happened a hundred years ago, or even fifty, I could have sent for Lina or Zelgadis," she added. "But I don't know where either of them are now, or if they're even alive. And even if I did know, they might not be able to get here in time." 

"Then it looks like I'm going to have to pursue my original plans," I said. "Xellos said he'd give me two weeks to make my decision, and I'd like to be well away from here before he comes back, so I'll be leaving within the next couple of days." I should be able to go quite a distance in ten days or so, especially if I flew. Find a good, big, cosmopolitan city and lose myself—or ourselves—in the crowd. See if I could find a grimoire of astral shamanistic attack spells, or someone willing to teach them to me. "I've asked Tina to come with me, but I don't know if she will or not." 

"I have some money saved up," Filia-mama said. "I'm going to give it to you." 

She was probably expecting me to protest or something, but I had never been much for pointless rituals. "Thank you," I said instead. "I'm going to start packing, or at least making a list of things I'm going to need." 

"You need to think," she said. "It must be a lot to take in all at once." 

I shrugged. The last thing I needed to do right now was think. If I spent too much time in thought right now, I might remember what it felt like to be fucked, or the fake loneliness in a pair of stormy blue eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

There were, I discovered that day, three different ways you could plan and pack for overland travel if you didn't know how to live off the land: You could assume you would be following main roads and staying at inns every night and bring only what you would need at your destination, you could assume that you might have to camp out and bring a minimal set of survival gear, or you could try to prepare for every possible eventuality and have to hire a train of pack mules to carry your tent, umbrella, snowshoes, Brass Racket, anvil, Field Guide to Poisonous Snakes, dancing slippers, etc. 

Given my circumstances, it seemed to me like the logical thing to do was go the middle route, but I'd never had to figure out what a minimal set of camping gear _was_ before, and when I asked around town I got all kinds of different answers. "Food" and "blankets" seemed like reasonable suggestions, but then so did "a tent" until I stopped to think about how bulky it would be to carry. It might have been possible if I'd been able to travel strictly in dragon form, but there might be times I would need to hide. In the end, I filled a big peddler-style body-hugging pack with what I thought was the most reasonable combination of items, and hoped it would be enough. That took most of that day. 

The next day, it rained. I don't just mean a light drizzle, either, I mean great soaking masses of water from the sky that filled the creek in the ravine behind the Vase and Mace to spring thaw levels. I ended up in my room, pacing and playing with what I knew about astral shamanism, trying to piece together something that might function as an attack spell. 

When the rain finally slackened off late that afternoon, I went outside and paced in circles around the kiln instead. That's where I was when Tina finally showed up. Not alone, either. She had a ticked-off looking Milos with her, and they were _both_ carrying backpacks. _What the hell . . . ? He can't seriously be intending to come with us!_

But when our eyes met, I knew that was _exactly_ what he meant to do. 

"I can't let the two of you go alone," he said with a grin. "That was Mom's condition for letting Tina go, by the way—they had a pretty awful fight yesterday. It took us all day today to convince her that we were going whether she wanted us to or not." 

Tina just blushed. She seemed unable to look at me. 

"And for that you ruined your life? You had a future here, you know." It made me feel guilty, so I spoke a bit more sharply than I meant to. 

"Who said I wanted that life? I've been trying to figure out for a while now how I could get away with leaving home. You just gave me the perfect excuse." 

I sighed. "Come inside, then. It isn't like we can leave today—we've barely got an hour before supper." 

Milos coughed. "Um, do you mind if we sleep over? We're . . . not exactly going to be welcome at home if we go back." 

"It should be all right. Ceiphied knows we've got enough spare beds to supply a small army." _Three_ guest rooms, and another finished room up under the eaves that I knew still had two beds in it, disused but spell-preserved. 

"Thanks, Val," Tina said. She was still looking at the ground, but her head rose a bit when I bent my arm and offered it to her. Slowly, she reached out and linked her own through it, leaning into me. _She's so light . . ._ but then, I could easily lift a horse, even in my human form. Still, it was another reminder of how fragile she was, not that I needed one. I reminded myself of it every second I was with her, because if I didn't, it would be easy to hurt her. Just hugging her with all the force I was able to bring to bear might snap her spine. Not like Gaav, who had let me sink my talons into him and yet come out unbloodied. 

_I am not going to think of that liar right now._

(Then why am I still wearing his hair ring?) 

That was one of the things I'd been avoiding thinking about since I'd found out who he was. The packet of astorflash still lodged in my pocket I could explain away by claiming it was a potential last-ditch defense against the Mazoku, but I didn't have any excuse for the ornament I wore, or for the way I sometimes found myself absently touching it. If I'd just wanted it because I needed to be able to communicate with him if I decided to take his devil's bargain, I could hide it at the bottom of my pack, but I didn't like that thought. I wanted it with me. 

Supper was a quiet meal. Filia-mama had made stew, but we all just pushed what was in our bowls around with spoons and forks and bits of bread without eating much. I found myself glancing surreptitiously at Tina. Even worse, I found myself making . . . comparisons. 

_I could end up breaking her if I lost control of myself while we were having sex. Not like him—he took the worst I could dish out._

_She'll only live another seventy years or so. After that, I'll be alone again. He would stay with me for the rest of my life._

_What do I even know about having sex with a girl? Will I be able to satisfy her, or will I just embarrass us both? What if I . . . can't keep it up?_ That thought alone was enough to make me cringe. I liked Tina's body, but it didn't inspire the raw red lust in me that Gaav's had. 

_Am I even really in love with her?_ I'd thought I'd known what love was: a mutual liking and attraction that was nothing like the selective madness in that stupid novel Tina had leant me. And then, for a few hours, I'd known what it was like to feel so strongly for someone that it really did verge on being a species of insanity. Now that feeling was gone again, leaving a hollow space inside me that made me feel restless and . . . yearning. I wanted to feel that again. I knew it was dangerous, and I wanted it. But I wasn't a child to reach out a hand to the fire because it was bright and pretty. 

After supper, we played cards until almost midnight. I don't think any of us wanted to go to sleep—not even Filia-mama, who went to the little room she used as a study and got out the shop's account books. We'd all started yawning, and it was getting difficult to pretend that we weren't tired, when suddenly there was a loud _bang_ and the entire building shook. 

Filia-mama emerged from her office almost instantly. "You three wait here. I'm going to see what's going on." 

She hustled outside, leaving the three of us looking at each other. I don't know what the others were thinking, but I know what I had on my mind. 

_Nothing in Stor's Eve has ever blown up._

_Something's very wrong._ Put that together with _there are Mazoku looking for me_ and the conclusion was enough to make me feel ill. 

I swallowed. "Milos, keep an eye on the door. I'm going upstairs to find out if I can see anything from the windows." 

My friend nodded firmly. "Nothing's going to get past me," he said, and took up a position right in front of the door, feet spread, hands clenched into fists. 

My bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking the ravine, but the guest room Milos had chosen for the night had a good view of the town, so that was where I headed. He'd left the shutters open, and there was an unmistakable red glow from lower down the hill. Not normal fire, but something that smoldered darkly even though everything within miles was soaking wet. The breeze was in the wrong direction, but I could still smell smoke, and there were shouts drifting up the hill, not quite loud enough for me to make out the words. 

If this was the Mazoku, and not just some weird conflagration started by . . . by some chemical from the tanner's vats or something, then it was all my fault. 

"Val? You look like you're going to be sick." I hadn't realized that Tina had followed me up until she spoke. 

"Because if I'd had the sense to leave yesterday, this wouldn't have happened." I didn't feel like I was going to be _sick_ , I felt like I wanted to rip my own throat out. _My fault . . . mine . . ._

Tina planted her hands on her hips. "That's nonsense, Val Ul Copt, and you know it! You might as well say it was my fault for having to spend hours on end arguing with my mother before she'd let me come with you! Or Miss Filia's fault for settling in Stor's Eve in the first place! Besides, they might have come here anyway," she added, in her "let's be practical" tone. "If I were a Mazoku, and I was looking to make someone do something that he really didn't want to do, hostages are one place I might start. _Why_ this happened isn't important. We have to decide what we're going to do about it: run, or hide." 

My hand slipped into my pocket, and found a crackly little paper packet. "No," I said slowly. "If this is happening because of me, I have to be the one to stop it." 

She rolled her eyes. "You aren't going to do something stupid like offer to go with whoever's down there if they agree to leave the village, are you?" 

I shook my head. "This is an entirely different kind of stupid. Two different kinds, maybe, if the first one doesn't work. Apparently part of my memory's been repressed, and I may have the key to unlocking it right here in my pocket. If it works, I'll be able to fight them . . . but I don't know what else it'll do to me. I get the impression that a lot of those memories are nightmare-fodder, and the person I was back then was very different from the one I am now. I might even end up on the Mazoku side." 

"If it starts looking like _that's_ going to happen, I'll smack you over the head until you come to your senses," Tina said firmly. "What's the backup kind of stupid?" 

I grimaced. "I've had . . . more offers than just Xellos', over the last couple of days. One's a bit less repugnant than the others. If there's no other way, I'll offer myself to him in return for the permanent safety of the village and everyone in it." 

"Oh, Val . . ." 

"Even if I don't have to go that far, there's a possibility I may not . . . go back to normal," I added. "I don't know if I'm about to put a key in a lock and turn it, or blast the door down. And I . . . know I was in love with someone else, during the time I can't remember." 

"So you're saying that there's a good chance I'm going to lose you either way." 

I nodded glumly. 

"Well, if it has to happen, I'd rather it be like this—because you were trying to do the right thing. But . . ." 

I waited. She flushed. 

"Would you . . . kiss me one last time?" 

"Of course," I said. "If you weren't here, I think I might have gone crazy already." 

I stepped forward and took her in my arms. It was a slow, sweet kiss. A good-bye. I hoped that in a few hours I'd be able to displace it with a new hello. 

I forced myself to let her go and step back. Taking the paper packet of astorflash from my pocket, I ripped it open and poured the contents into my mouth. I had to force myself to chew, and then swallow. The dried herb tasted . . . _brown_ , somehow, but with floral under-notes. I think it might have been a pleasant enough flavour in a lower concentration, but a whole mouthful was too much. 

Almost instantly, I began to feel lightheaded and a bit dizzy. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, waiting for it to fade. I could still smell smoke, and feel Mazoku and one bright point of white-gold that had to be Filia-mama moving around in the lower part of town. At least fifty Mazoku, but none of them were very strong. Some of them were working their way up the hill, and the nearest one was . . . right outside and . . . 

"Just a moment!" Milos called out, and my eyes opened wide with horror. 

"Don't open that door!" I shouted, and sprinted for the stairs. 

I vaulted over the banister and landed on the floor below with a loud _bang!_ that made me thankful we didn't have a cellar. The boards bent anyway, driven into the earth underneath them. It didn't matter. 

I was already too late. 

It was green and ten feet tall and had thorns growing all over it, kind of like what you might have gotten by crossing a troll with a cactus, which made it fairly humanoid for a lesser Mazoku. It had grabbed Milos by the arms and hauled him outside, and was now holding him up in front of it, gripping one of his forearms in each of its huge ham-hands and ignoring his efforts to kick it. Its arms were too long for him to connect, and even if he had been able to land a blow, it wouldn't have done the Mazoku any damage. 

"Where is the ancient dragon?" it asked him in a muddy-sounding voice. 

"How should I know? _Aack!_ " Milos writhed in pain as the damnable creature jerked on his arms. A little harder, and it would pop his limbs out of their sockets, tear my friend apart as I'd done to that mugger. Was this supposed to be some weird kind of cosmic justice? 

"Fuck that," I muttered, and began to run. 

A few feet from the doorway, I dropped, slid under Milos, and came up with one taloned hand extended. It bit into the Mazoku, leaving behind four gape-mouthed, unleaking gashes filled with blackness. 

As the creature staggered back, I jumped, grabbed it by the elbows, and used what power I could pull up in a hurry to blow those elbows apart. Milos dropped, but the Mazoku reacted quickly, whacking me in the chest with the stump of one arm. I flew about ten feet through the air and tucked myself, preparing to roll upright on landing. 

A massive pulse went through my head, and I grabbed it with both hands as something twisted and then slotted into place inside me. Images rushed by too quickly to comprehend, and instead of the neat tuck-and-roll I'd intended, I crashed down on my back, feeling the ground deform underneath me and having the breath knocked right out of my body. For a moment, I just lay there as my internal perspective . . . zoomed out, giving me a look at what a tiny part of myself Val Ul Copt really was. 

_You're stronger than this, Val. Get up._ The voice of memory had the rough warmth of the scales of a dragon who'd been sleeping in the sun. 

(Yes, Lord Gaav.) 

I got one limb under me at a time and pushed myself to my feet. There was blood trickling from the corner of my mouth where my fangs had dug in when I'd landed, and I wiped it off absently with the back of one taloned hand. My back felt like one solid bruise. My power was at too low an ebb right now to protect me as it should have. 

Then the voice of memory intruded again. _The thing about Dynast's Mazoku is that they've all got the same training. Icicle-ass wants them to see him as the font of all knowledge, so he doesn't encourage them to find outside teachers—in fact, I've seen him discourage it. Fatally, most of the time. So they all fight like him, even when it isn't appropriate to their forms. And they all leave the same gaps in their defense._

I felt my mouth twist into an unholy grin as I gathered what power I did have together, feeling the crackle in the air as a stronger wind defeated the night breeze in the area immediately around me and sent my hair swirling upward. 

"Going to try again?" the Mazoku asked me in its bubbly voice, and I laughed. 

" _Try_ again? I've got your measure now, and since I'm a little low on power, I think I'll take yours." Space bent under my will, and I reappeared kneeling on the thing's shoulders. Quickly, I dug my talons into the sides of its head. " _Ashen Claim!_ " I snapped, and then gasped as the Mazoku's energy shot up my arms, blasting open channels that disuse had withered into mere threads. 

" _How?!_ . . . spell . . . ishn't . . ." 

I was glad when the fucking thing finally collapsed into a pile of grey powder under me, because that made it shut up. Black lightning crackled over my skin, and each breath I took felt like the stab of a knife as the negative energy reached my core and shot back out again, opening more and more of the pathways that Lord Gaav had laid out inside me all those years ago. 

"Val—" 

" _Don't touch me!_ " I snapped, and then groaned as the final barrier broke open and the negative emotions of everyone in the city flooded over me, fear and pain for the humans, greed and bloodlust for the lesser Mazoku. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until the wave filled me up. "Don't talk to me either," I added. "I need to concentrate for a bit." 

I sat down cross-legged on the ground with my hands palm-up in my lap. I'd done these exercises twice a day at one time, under Lord Gaav's watchful eye if he happened to be there. He got grumpy if I seemed to be disregarding my health, and as a Mazoku-dragon chimera, it was vital that I keep my internal energies in balance or I couldn't use my full power without paying an agonizing price. After his death, I hadn't been able to bring myself to do those exercises anymore. They'd reminded me too much of him. And so when I'd tried to go full-power against Xellos at the Shrine of Vrabazard a year later, I'd nearly gone into convulsions. 

_Lord Gaav is alive,_ I reminded myself as I closed my eyes. _You spoke to him—touched him—made love with him. He couldn't be_ more _alive._ I could feel warm metal resting against the nape of my neck, and concentrated on that sensation for a moment before reaching deep inside myself. The negative energy that had flooded me hadn't had a chance to entwine itself more than superficially with my dragon power yet, so it was easy to tease the two apart and set them to spiraling around my core in balanced but separate streams. 

I let myself ease up out of the depths again, aware that almost a full minute had passed and my surroundings might have shifted . . . but there weren't any Mazoku nearby, just the girl and the boy— _Tina_ and _Milos_ , I reminded myself. Who were . . . were _clan_ with me, even though they weren't dragons. I had a _clan_ again, one that stretched beyond just myself and Lord Gaav. What a wonderful, _terrifying_ thought. 

Apparently, Tina and Milos hadn't been too intimidated by the energy that had been crackling across my skin up until a moment ago to crouch down beside me. 

"It's fine," I said, and smiled at them. Hopefully it didn't look too forced. 

Tina cleared her throat. "Um . . . Val? You have a horn growing from your forehead." She radiated confusion. 

"Oh, that." I reached up and touched it, verifying location and length. It seemed to be the same, near my hairline and about six inches long. 

"'Oh, that'," Milos mimicked. "You know, it would be nice if you told us what the _fuck_ is going on." Not, I knew, a word he normally used, since his mother was of the wash-mouths-out-with-soap persuasion. It would have told me how rattled he was even if I hadn't been able to taste his fear. I didn't like the fact that I was feeding on it, but gathering in negative energy is more like photosynthesis than eating—I couldn't stop myself from doing it if there was an energy source nearby. 

"There's no time," I said, and surged to my feet. "There are another fifty-three Mazoku down there, and if I don't get rid of the rest of them soon, people are going to die." 

I reached through the fabric of the world, into the astral pocket where most of my belongings were stored. As far as I could tell, they hadn't been disturbed since I'd gone to my final confrontation with Almayce all those years ago, but it still took me several moments to find what I wanted. I hadn't touched my sword since Lord Gaav's death, for the same reason I'd stopped doing my exercises: it had reminded me too violently of him. We'd created the gently-curved, single-edged, four-and-a-half-foot-long blade together, designing it to match my favoured style of fighting, my strength, and my size. I slung the worn leather of the harness into place at my shoulder and reached back to half-draw the sword and make sure it still slid easily from the scabbard. The magic in it had kept it sharp and unrusted, and the hilt almost vibrated against my fingers. It wanted me to use it. 

_Soon,_ I promised it and slid it back into its scabbard. 

"Are you two ready?" I asked Tina and Milos. 

"You can't expect us both to come with you," Milos said—bravado, with a thick layer of fear underneath. "Tina should—" 

"I can speak for myself, thanks very much," the girl interrupted. "Is it going to be safe for the two of us to come along?" 

"Safer," I said grimly. "Nowhere is entirely safe right now, but the more scattered everyone is, the more difficult it's going to be for me to prevent more deaths." 

"Then we should go. Now," Tina said firmly. Not completely fearless, but . . . I blinked, sorting nuances. Was she truly more afraid _for_ me than _of_ me? 

_I think that if I'd been someone just a little bit different, I truly could have loved you._


	7. Chapter 7

Before anyone could change their minds, I transported us all to the most central space I could find that was currently clear of Mazoku: the yard in front of the blacksmith's, with its half-height walls. Balefire was eating away at the buildings across the way, but it hadn't reached here yet. I held up my hand, and the flames jumped to me like a well-trained dog and were absorbed through my skin. 

That made three Mazoku pop out above me. All wore various monstrous-but-vaguely-humanoid shapes—low-rankers, and strangers to me, but all descended of Dynast. 

"What did you do?!" asked one of them in a voice like a foghorn. 

"Do?" I asked them with a smirk. "The flames recognized their true master, that's all. Dynast Grauscherra is the Dark Lord of Air, not Fire." 

Two brows and one row of cilia scrunched into wrinkles. Confusion is the lettuce of negative emotions: it has almost no food value, and doesn't really taste like much. "There is no Dark Lord of Fire." 

"I wouldn't expect children like you to remember his name." I drew my sword. "And you're not going to care for much longer, either." 

I launched myself at the one with the cilia, but bent space to come out near the other two instead and took them both with one blow, a long cut in through the neck of the first one and out through the torso of the second, just above the hip. Then I lunged at the one with the cilia, who had frozen in midair, and skewered it. 

I landed lightly on top of the wall around the blacksmith's yard and flicked the last bits of steaming black gunk off my sword, then raised the blade and propped it against my shoulder. Behind me, I heard a retching noise, and turned in time to see Milos vomit up his meagre supper. Tina had either been better prepared, or rid herself of hers already, because she was just watching me, pale-faced and straight-backed. There was fear coming from both of them now, and I felt a cold lump of grief settle in my belly. 

I hadn't wanted this, but there was no turning back now. 

"You're not Val," Milos said in an accusatory tone as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Anger to cover his fear. "Just who— _what_ —are you, and what did you do to him?" 

"You can call me Valgaav, if you like. As for Val Ul Copt . . . you could say he's someone I might have been if I hadn't seen my entire clan slaughtered in front of me." 

"He isn't coming back, is he?" Tina asked. Sorrowful, but not surprised. 

I shook my head. "Without the memory of how to balance and control the energies I've already absorbed tonight, I— _he_ would end up frying himself. I'm sorry." _And even if it were possible, I don't think I could bring myself to do it._ Easier to cut off my own legs than to deliberately amputate parts of my psyche, even the ones grotesquely twisted from old injuries. 

"I had a feeling," she said. 

There was a brief, awkward pause. _Back to business,_ I told myself. "I'm going up on the roof of the greengrocer's place so that I'll have a better view. Try to stay hidden. Thankfully there's enough fear and the like in the area that none of the Mazoku are likely to be able to pinpoint individual emotional sources. If it looks like one of them _has_ spotted you, scream as loud as you can." In fact, if they were all as young and ill-trained as the ones we'd already encountered, half of them were probably running around town drunk on fear and anger, paying little attention to their surroundings. They'd be easy to pick off. 

Tina nodded. Milos sneered, but he didn't say anything. 

From my new vantage point, I could see most of what was going on in the central part of the village. _First things first._ I called the remaining balefire to me and extinguished it, and felt the attention of the Mazoku who were still reasonably sober snap to me . . . except for the ones who were fighting Filia, who had established herself in the central square in dragon form and was batting them around with her talons, herding them into place while she muttered the Chaos Words governing the holy spell Chaotic Disintegrate under her breath. She got a half-dozen of the little Mazoku that way even as I watched. 

The darkness left behind when I'd put out the balefire was more to the advantage of the Mazoku than the humans, so I tossed an augmented light spell into the sky above the village. When the brilliantly glowing ball burst, it left an aurora behind that should last for hours. Which meant that no one in Stor's Eve would be getting much sleep tonight, but right now that was the least of my worries. 

I slipped my sword back into its scabbard and held up both hands. Nearly thirty of the Mazoku were running around drunk on negative energy, some of them tormenting the purely human residents of the village, some of them just acting like brainless fools. One was sitting in the middle of a street, counting his own tentacles over and over again, and giggling. For each of those I created a single ball of black-green fire, holding them in orbit above my head until I had enough, and then sending them off through the astral. In that state, none of the Mazoku were likely to be able to dodge, and I smirked as I felt twenty-eight of the points of darkness in my mind just wink out. 

Fifty-three less the thirty-seven Filia and I had just dealt with left sixteen, who were pulling together in the street in front of the tailor's. One of them radiated more strongly than the others—a mid-rank Mazoku, and probably the one in charge of this fiasco. A moment later, another point of darkness winked out, then a second. 

"Doing my job for me, are you?" I muttered to the night. If I dealt with the mid-ranker, my bet was that the others would run away, but I had to do it just right. 

After all, I couldn't have them coming back. 

I destroyed the shirt I was wearing by an act of will and magic, letting it puff into ash, and extended my wings, scowling at the prickling sensation that resulted . . . but my energies were in balance this time, so it wasn't too bad. I might even have been able to take my full dragon form, although that would have been agonizing. I'd never actually tried doing it while I had Mazoku energy in my system. 

I furled my wings tight, and then bent space around me. The wind whistled in my ears as I dropped, sword chopping through a lesser Mazoku, then snapped my wings out to full span and caught the night breeze. 

Lord Gaav had long ago pointed something out to me about other Mazoku, which I'd confirmed myself in dozens of fights over the years: when moving in three-dimensional space, they tended to behave as though they were weightless. Very few of them realized that it was possible to make wind and gravity and all the rest work _for_ them. Lord Gaav himself was one of the rare exceptions, sharing my instinctive draconic knowledge of flight dynamics. Xellos was another, although he normally prioritized his illusion of humanity over his fighting skills. It took a lot to make him break that façade. 

I skimmed along about eight feet above the ground for a bit, then jammed my foot against a Mazoku's shoulder and used it to propel myself upward again, halting in mid-air opposite the middle-ranking Mazoku and using my powers more than my wings to hover. It didn't look like I was going to discover another exception to the Mazoku Rule of Antigravity tonight, because I could feel the shock radiating from them all. I propped my sword against my shoulder, slid my other hand into my pocket, and smirked, wondering if the mid-ranker opposite me was old enough or knowledgeable enough to recognize the pose I was mimicking. I didn't recognize her, but that didn't mean anything—I'd never bothered to memorize the names of Dynast's lesser Mazoku. And anyway, her pale-blue hair included bangs long enough to cast a shadow across the top part of her face, making recognition difficult. 

"You know, you didn't have to trash the town to find me," I said. "If you'd offered, I would have taken you on anytime." 

_Confusion._ "You're no dragon—what the _hell_?" 

I snorted. "Did icicle-ass even tell you why he wanted you to look for me, or did he just point and say _fetch_ and wait for you to take off like the well-trained dog you are?" 

Her mouth twisted, and I thought for a moment that she was going to attack me and braced myself to smack her down, but instead she just gave me a sour look. "I thought there was something odd about the orders as they were passed down to me, but it isn't mine to question. If you are Val Ul Copt, Lord Dynast wants you brought before him, alive or dead." 

I smirked. "I hope you're prepared to try for 'dead', because I won't accept any command from those who abandoned my lord the Chaos Dragon when Ragradia cursed him. At least Beastmaster had the manners to send her most powerful servant to me with an invitation . . . although she apparently didn't learn from my sending him back with holes in him the last time." There was a wave of shock and fear from the lesser Mazoku around us. Good; they were all listening. "Now, do at least try to put enough effort into this to make it interesting," I added, and made my Mazoku aura flare, sending out a pulse of energy that I knew was the equal of any General's or Priest's. 

She vanished into the astral, which at least proved that she wasn't stupid. Good. I pivoted away from a blow that penetrated suddenly into the physical and lunged, driving my sword through the hole between the planes before she could close it again. There was a cry, and I followed up my stab with a ball of green-black energy. 

She tumbled back out into the physical smoking, her bangs crumbling to ash to reveal blind-looking pupilless eyes, and bounced once as she hit the ground. 

The other Mazoku attacked me then, and I smiled and released the spell I'd prepared before leaving the roof and then held onto that whole time, just for them. " _Lamentation Without End._ " 

No watching human would have seen anything, but on the astral, the spell behaved rather like an exploding porcupine. Only the very tips of the spines came through to the physical plane, each appearing inside a Mazoku, then disintegrating into smaller needles which shredded their victim's substance from the inside. 

That left me with one very battered mid-ranking Mazoku, a lot of grey dust, and an assortment of onlookers that included one dragon, now back in her human form. 

I dropped to the ground and grabbed the Mazoku by her throat, not that she needed to breathe, then hauled her up until our eyes were on a level. Terror resonated in her, and I licked my lips involuntarily. _Delicious._

"Tell Dynast that the world will return to Chaos before I will serve him or anyone else but Lord Gaav," I said. Then I threw her and twisted space around her while she was in midair. If she was lucky, she'd landed on an icy, barren island just outside the edge of the old Mazoku Barrier. Otherwise, I hoped she had a pleasant swim. 

Someone applauded. "That was quite the show! A shame you didn't warn me in advance, or I would have brought popcorn." 

"I hope you understand that what I just said applies equally to you and your mistress, Xellos," I said. "Or do you have another kill order for me if I refuse to play along? I'll warn you that this time, I _won't_ be starting the battle in a weakened state." 

Xellos flickered off the roof he'd been sitting on and reappeared at street level, just far enough from me that I'd have to put in some effort if I wanted to skewer him. I couldn't detect his emotions, which might either have meant that he had none or that he was shielding them from me on purpose. "Oh, dear me, no," he said. "My orders for this particular contingency are to leave you alone. Lord Beastmaster values having me in one piece more than she values eliminating you . . . for the time being." His eyes opened. "That may change, of course, if you make another attempt at upstaging us." 

"I don't currently have orders to attempt any such thing," I said, and saw the subtle change in his expression as the hidden message hit home. "There's one more thing you need to know: I consider the people of this village my clan. All of them. If anything happens to them, I'm going to take it _very_ personally." 

"I'm surprised you didn't take the time to tell Sirella that." 

My wings rustled as I shrugged. "Was that her name? Regardless, I'm sure you're equal to the task of getting word around." 

"Ah. Well, then, I'll take my leave. Lord Beastmaster needs to be informed of tonight's events." 

"Of course," I said. 

And Xellos disappeared into the astral, leaving me alone with the villagers. 

Filia was the first to move, pushing her way to the front of the crowd, and then out into the street, to stand where Xellos had stood. 

"Val . . . No, Valgaav," she said, and the pain in her was crystal-pure, a sweet and subtle flavour such as I'd never tasted before. I didn't want to be tasting it now, but what could I do? What could I say to her? Child-me, the tiny part of my being that she had raised from the egg, wanted to hug her, but the larger part of me knew that might not be welcome. 

"Filia." And I waited. 

"Are you . . . all right?" The crystal-pure pain was vanishing under a crush of other emotions. Worry, that was the largest one, but there were others, both positive and negative, too jumbled together to make out. 

I nodded. "Thankfully, no one I'm . . . really close to . . . seems to have been hurt tonight. If you or Tina or Milos had died, I might not have reacted well." 

A long pause. "This is difficult. Are you . . . still going to leave, or . . . ?" 

_How can I do anything else?_ Even if she couldn't feel it, I could: the spicy-sweetness of fear coming from all around. Not everyone was completely terrified of me, and some of them might have been able to work through it given time, but there were others who never would stop being afraid, and every time they saw me, it would grind salt into their wounds. 

And that was without even considering my other reason. 

"Clan or no clan, I don't belong here. And there's someone waiting for me." I reached up, pulled the ring from my hair, and held it out to her, turned so that the intaglio showed clearly. I saw her jerk as she recognized the sigil. "I lied about where I got this. He's alive. He gave it to me himself. And I'm not going to leave his side again if I can help it. I don't want to end up mourning him again." 

"Will you still be taking the Miller children with you?" 

I shook my head. "They'd never survive. Humans aren't meant to stick their noses into the wars of gods and monsters, and neither of those two is another Lina Inverse, or even a Zelgadis Greywords. Besides, introducing my ex-girlfriend to my mate would be beyond awkward. Lord Gaav would laugh it off, but Tina . . . well, I don't know whether she'd try to kill me, him, or herself, but it would be messy." 

A parade of expressions chased each other across Filia's face, lagging a split second behind the changes in her emotions, and I was willing to bet I could guess what had caused each one. Shock first— _my Val was mated?_ —then horror— _to a Dark Lord_ —then disgust— _to another male who isn't even a real dragon, oh Vrabazard I don't even know how many rules that breaks_ —to sudden comprehension as she began to recast the Darkstar Incident as something touched off by a widowed dragon half-mad with grief, rather than an angry subordinate trying to carry out what he believed to be his lord's last wishes. 

"How can you possibly love . . . him?" she asked at last, clearly suppressing several less complimentary possible endings to that sentence. 

I felt my mouth curve into a rueful smile. "Have you ever met anyone who can answer that question sensibly? He saved my life. He poured immense amounts of his time and his energy into me, even though he didn't have to. When I needed something, he was always willing to give it to me." _And some of the things I've needed over the years would make you cringe if you knew about them._ There were cracked places inside of me that couldn't be glued or welded back together, that required special treatment she was too kind to be able to give me herself. "There are a lot of people who think that Mazoku can't love, but that isn't quite true. Parental love and brotherly love are out of the question—too altruistic—but romantic love? The first cousin of obsession and jealousy? An emotion that's killed millions of people over the centuries? It would be strange if they _couldn't_ feel that one, don't you think?" 

Filia blinked several times as comprehension crystallized in her brain. Before she could ask another question, I took two steps forward and gave her a quick hug. At least she didn't try to back away, although she did flinch, just a bit, before her arms closed reciprocally around me. Reflexive fear, fading quickly, but it reminded me again of why I couldn't stay. 

"Be safe," I told her. "I'll try to visit, if I can manage to do it without bringing along additional unwanted guests." 

I had to break away from her before I could bend space. I didn't want to accidentally bring her along. 

She didn't belong in the world I was returning to either, although she might have brushed up against its edges, once upon a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Lamentation Without End" is actually half an episode title, but I thought it would make a good name for a nasty spell. ;)
> 
> The "Dark Lord of Fire/Air" bit was just made up. Having the Dragon Gods each associated with an element makes it plausible that there's something similar for the Dark Lords, though, and assigning the elements used in shamnism in the most logical way gets us Dolphin -> water, Phibrizzo -> astral/spirit, Gaav -> fire, Dynast -> air, and Zelas -> earth.
> 
> One more chapter—I mean, you didn't think I was just going to let it end without another sex scene, did you? ;)


	8. Chapter 8

I wasn't surprised to find him on a cliff overlooking the ocean, with the wind playing with his hair and his coat and beating the waves below to foam. He'd told me once that he found the sea soothing in its ordered chaos. 

He sensed my arrival immediately—I'd never been able to entirely hide from him—and turned to face me. "Valgaav. Welcome back." There was no flow of emotion from him, so he had to be blocking it, unsure of how I would react to him. 

I smiled. 

And then I drove my fist into the pit of his stomach. He staggered slightly and grunted, but didn't double over. He also didn't look at all surprised. 

"How dare you go off and get yourself killed?!" I growled. My second blow hit his jaw, snapping his head to one side. "You arrogant, selfish, _overconfident_ fucking son of a bitch! You promised me that you wouldn't expose yourself to fucking Hellmaster! _What the fuck did you think you were doing?!_ " It was half-past tempting to knee him in the groin, but I wanted that part of him in working order, so I aimed for his stomach again instead. His power would prevent him from bruising, but I knew from experience that having flesh and nerves violently compressed that way hurt like blazes for a while afterwards even if there were no permanent consequences. 

Big hands reached out to grasp my shoulders, and I stilled. 

"You're right," Lord Gaav said simply. "I fucked up. Xellos and Phibby always pissed me off at the best of times, and I let them get under my skin and push me into confronting Lina Inverse openly. I'm sorry." 

They weren't words any Mazoku often spoke with sincerity, I knew. And so when he moved to gather me against him in a tight embrace, I didn't try to stop him. I put my arms around his waist and leaned into him with a soft sigh as he cupped my head with one big hand. 

Joy is an emotion that normal Mazoku don't find at all pleasant . . . but I am not, and will never be a normal Mazoku. Although dragons don't truly _feed_ on positive emotions as such, strong enough ones can cause a hint of pleasurable sensation to more through our astral bodies. Here and now, it left a prickling, tingling warmth behind. 

Lord Gaav rubbed his fingers lightly against the back of my neck, and I let him do that too, even though it was the most vulnerable point on a dragon's body. 

He'd held my life in his hands since the beginning, and I trusted him with it. 

"I missed you so much . . ." I'd said something of the sort to him already, on that mad, rushed night at the inn, but I hadn't really remembered, then. Hadn't known what it had felt like to have the center of my world scooped out a second time without him being there to help me cope with the emptiness. 

I didn't deal well with losing people that I loved. The death of my clan had left me shattered inside. I'd latched on to revenge as a reason for surviving, and during the day I'd been able to let anger buoy me along, but at night I'd been trapped inside my own head with the guilt and the ghosts. I'd used to curl myself into a tiny knot in my bed, wrapping myself tighter and tighter, unable to scream or even whimper, as the corpses of my family and friends paraded themselves in front of my mind's eye and delivered their message to me, one after the other, always the same: _You could have saved us. You. If you'd been stronger—faster—better—_

And then one night, Lord Gaav had interrupted the cycle. He'd simply teleported himself into my room and sat down on the edge of the bed, and I'd looked up with a panicked gasp when I'd sensed him. 

"What the hell is this?" he'd asked, in a conversational tone of voice, emotions masked. 

"I don't deserve to be alive. There were others so much better than me." _Val the Hawk_ , they'd called me. Always doing penance for being too aggressive . . . on my knees before the statue of Ceiphied . . . and then when it had _mattered_ , I might as well have been as much of a pacifist as the rest of them. "I'm weak—useless—I couldn't even save a single fucking egg. I deserve to be punished." 

"Do you?" He'd assessed me with a grave expression before putting one hand on my shoulder, stroking the skin lightly until, without warning, he jabbed his thumb in hard. I gasped, my eyes going wide at the pain radiating from the place where he was grinding nerve against bone. I hung suspended in the instant forever until he let go again. "I have no use for the weak, little dragon. If that's what you are, then you do indeed deserve to be punished." 

His hands roved slowly over my bare upper body, finding other pressure points. After the first one, I made no sound, only shook. The pain seemed to go on forever. I broke out in a cold sweat that dried against my skin. My vision began to grey out. I was floating . . . falling . . . Every stab of pain in my body seemed to lessen the turmoil in my mind, filling me until there was no room for grief or guilt. _Yes. This is . . . what I deserve. Ironic that it should be given by a Mazoku's hands._ Or not. I was his, I'd accepted his bargain, and so he had the right to punish or reward me. 

"Idiot dragon." The words broke through my pinpoint focus as the pain ebbed, leaving me feeling empty. Waiting for something to fill me up. "You are _not_ weak. You have immense power and endurance—immense potential. You just don't have any idea of what to do with it. A bar of metal doesn't become a sword on its own." 

"L-lord Gaav . . ." I could feel myself settling back into my skin, slowly, the guilt and the grief muted. And there was a muddle of what I knew to be his feelings, too, although I'd been a Mazoku for less than a month at that point and wasn't quite sure how to interpret the complex mixture. 

"Shh." He pulled me awkwardly into his lap, and I dug both hands into the front of his coat, needing to cling to something. "There are things in this world that are outside your control, Valgaav. There are even things outside of mine. Not an easy fucking lesson to learn, I know—I'm still wrestling with it." He ran his fingers through my hair, cropped short to get rid of the mess of blood and sand that had gotten matted into it as I'd fled through the desert, while he radiated regret and tired old anger. "All I can offer you is the power to take the future into your own hands, so that you never need to blame yourself again." 

"I don't . . ." The prickling sensation at the corners of my eyes was _tears_ , I realized, half shocked and half horrified. Nearly a month since that night in the desert, and I hadn't been able to cry. Now the grief wormed its way out, hot tears and rough sobs let loose by physical and emotional exhaustion. He kept holding me through it all—I think he didn't know what else to do. "I don't want to be alone," I managed at last. 

And he'd done everything to see that I wasn't, picking me up and moving me to another room, where he'd laid me in his bed and curled up around me, almost like my mother had done when I'd just been hatched. I'd intended the embrace I sleepily gave him the next morning as one of pure gratitude, and we were both surprised when it rapidly turned into something more. As though my body, which had been feeling rather numb since I'd become Mazoku, had suddenly become greedy for the sensation of another's touch. As though his body, which I knew he regarded with a quiet, resigned hatred, had given up the fight to imitate a pure Mazoku's cold-blooded astral projection. And over the years that bond had progressed from a simple mixture of convenient sex and mutual affection to something as strong and stable as the Staff of the Gods that supports the world. 

And now, as we stood together on a cliff overlooking the ocean, with our arms around each other and my head resting on his shoulder . . . now I couldn't help but think it was time to reaffirm that bond. 

"I want to taste you," I said softly. "And then I want to ride you. May I?" 

I could feel the hunger rising in him at my words, but his voice was level as he said, "Anything you want. Last time was for me, so it's only fair that this time be for you." 

"Since when have you cared about fair?" I retorted, and he laughed. 

"I only care when it's about you," he said as his fingers slowly worked their way down my spine, tracing circles around each vertebra. 

My hands remembered how to work that damned coat of his this time, where the extra, hidden buttons were located. Instead of letting me push it off his shoulders, he took it and spread it out on the hummocky grass and reclined on top of it, leaning on his elbow with his legs spread, smirking at me in that so-familiar way. 

I knelt between his thighs and pushed his shirt up, revealing the hard muscles of his abdomen, tan skin and the wandering path of that damnable scar Phibrizzo had left him with, an eternal reminder to us both that our life together could be broken apart as easily as . . . _No._ No, I wasn't going to let myself think about that. 

It wouldn't happen again because I wasn't going to let him try anything like that alone again. 

I kissed the very bottom tip of the scar, then the place where I'd punched him—not so much an apology as a reminder. He shivered, muscles flexing as I blew across his navel, then used my knuckles to trace the thickening path of red hair that led down from there until it plunged down inside his trousers. 

He'd been wearing the same belt of tooled dark brown leather, or a good copy of it, for three hundred years, ever since I'd snapped his previous one in an overeager attempt to do just what I was doing now. I undid the buckle and unbuttoned the front of his trousers. I expected his cock to pop straight out, but he was only half-hard. 

"Being punched in the stomach doesn't do much for me as foreplay," he said dryly before I could even look up. "I don't have your masochistic streak, crazy dragon." 

"I suppose that means I have my work cut out for me, then," I said with a smile. 

"Not . . . so very much work." His words almost managed to cover the gasp as I began to stroke him. Almost. 

He really did have the largest cock I had ever seen on a human body, I thought affectionately as I wrapped both my hands around the awakening length and brought the tip of it to my lips. There was enough there to fill my mouth, too, and I went down on him slowly, licking and sucking and tasting. I groaned softly, because the familiar flavour of his skin was enough on its own to cause a reaction in my body . . . and then I almost laughed as his hand tangled itself in my hair and began to guide me to quicker, harder movements. Trust him not to be able to let anyone else be in charge for more than thirty seconds at a time . . . I suppose it went with being a Dark Lord. 

He growled at me when I tried to pull off his cock, a wordless bass rumble. I growled back at him, and gave him my best glare. He chuckled, eyebrows rising, and lifted his hand away. 

"You don't get to come before I have you in me," I told him, still glaring. 

"Stubborn dragon. All right, but make it quick." 

_Quick_ meant undoing my belt and yanking one leg out of my trousers without worrying too much about the other one, and straddling him on my knees while we were still both mostly dressed—I couldn't remember the last time we'd been so hungry for each other that we'd gone at it with most of our clothes still on. 

I ran my hand along his cock, using my power to create a layer of slick gel that would ease his way inside me, and began slowly sliding down onto him. It hurt more than usual—my body wasn't accustomed again yet—but I didn't care, because it also felt wonderful. Being filled. Child-me _would_ have had to become fixated on a woman . . . but I did understand why, more or less. Katina Miller had enough fire in her to give me part of what I needed, to steady me with words when I was being a fool, and child-me hadn't had to deal with the flashbacks and other full-out madness that I sometimes experienced, the things that only . . . extreme measures could free me from. 

That was the price of memory, so stark and painful and powerful that I couldn't endure it alone . . . but without it, I was helpless. 

"Val?" 

"I don't know what I would do if you weren't here," I said, and slowly began to move, shuddering as I angled my hips so that the head of his cock pressed into me just right. 

He chuckled. "Well, you did nearly succeed in blowing up the world without my help. Most people would say that's pretty impressive." Then he moaned, a deep, throaty sound, as I sped up. "You should know how I feel for you," he muttered. "There's no need to say it, is there?" 

Say it? Of course not. Not when I could feel it through my skin, Mazoku and dragon perceptions tangling together the warmth of love and the melted chocolate of lust and the heady fizz of pride. The wave of emotion was almost enough to make me come all by itself, and I lost the ability to form words as he closed his hand around my erection and began to stroke me roughly. He also bucked his hips, trying to make me move faster, and I obliged him helplessly. 

_Yours. I'm yours._

Not just because of a decision of desperation made one night in the desert, with no real idea of what the consequences would be. What bound us one to the other was everything we had shared since. 

He squeezed me firmly, callused thumb swirling over the head of my cock, and it was just too much. The cry as I came must have been heard for miles . . . and then I heard the familiar growl as he filled me. 

I slumped over him, sighing. My wings, which had erupted from my back in a surge of pleasure-pain the moment I'd hit my climax, sagged around us in soft folds. 

"I guess we made a bit of a mess," I said, looking down at him, at the long curve of my seed spattered across his bare stomach and the rucked-up part of his shirt. 

"It's easy enough to clean up," he said, but made no move to do so. 

I levered myself up off him, then sat down cross-legged in the grass beside him, ignoring the ache from my ass. It would heal soon anyway, even if I didn't take any particular action to make it do so. 

"What do we do after we clean up?" I asked him. 

"Start over from the beginning, I suppose, since you seem to have given us a fucking village to protect. I've just been wandering around . . . not hiding, exactly, but trying to be inconspicuous while I thought about what comes next. Without you to hold things together, the others've wiped my power base clean. We don't have so much as a fucking brass demon to our names right now." 

"Great," I muttered, then blinked. "How did you know I'd promised to protect Stor's Eve?" 

"I was watching you, idiot dragon. Did you think I wouldn't? Without your memory, you would have been a sitting duck for Xellos if his orders had included taking you out before you could regain your full power." 

"You were worried about me?" 

He flushed. "Idiot dragon," he repeated, which was answer enough. 

I bent to kiss him, and he grabbed me and pulled me down on top of him. We wrestled together in the grass, laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So . . . um, yeah. That's the scene that was bothering me.
> 
> And that's the end of the 'fic. I have two more in progress (currently working on The One Where Val Actually Finds a Way to Save Gaav, which needs a proper title), but it's likely to be at least a couple of months before either is finished and ready to post.


End file.
